


Long Way Home

by EldritchMage



Series: Logan and Rachel Osaka [7]
Category: Wolverine and the X-Men - All Media Types, X-Men - All Media Types
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-03
Updated: 2015-07-03
Packaged: 2018-04-07 13:25:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 19
Words: 40,649
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4264845
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EldritchMage/pseuds/EldritchMage
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Welcome to Part 7 of My Logan and Rachel Osaka series.</p><p>In the aftermath of Weapon X's failed attempt to turn Rachel into an assassin, Rachel's talent for sensing the emotions of anyone around her has gone rogue. Where before she sensed other's emotions, now hers project uncontrollably, causing madness and death in anyone within a half klick. Logan and Daniel have found a Zen monk in Japan who can help Rachel learn to control her new talent.</p><p>The monk, however, has more than one agenda up her sleeve, and dealing with the deadly result forces Rachel and Logan to leave Japan. Somewhere over British Columbia, their jet runs into trouble. Logan goes down with the plane, Rachel's hurt in her first ever parachute jump, and *something* is out in the dark forest, something very, very angry...</p><p>Hope you enjoy the survival tale. Please leave me a comment to tell me what you think.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> The usual disclaimers apply -- X-Men and the names of the X-Men characters are trademarks of Marvel, Inc. 
> 
> Rachel Osaka/Omen, Daniel O’Shea/Daemon, Keshe/Stillness, Roshi Timisu/Reaper, and Eric Delacroix/Anubis are my characters, and aren't based on anyone I know.

I’m Logan. Wolverine. If you know what that means, then you also know what this means – I’d gotten a message about a private jet leaving LaGuardia and heading for Sapporo, Japan. You know who sent the message, too – Rachel Osaka.

Rachel’s my lady. Lotta history there. We’d met after her parents were assassinated in an attempt on her life, when I’d been the guy standing between her and the killers. I’d helped her come to terms with her mutant talents of empathy and time sensing. By the time the killers came after her, we were lovers. When the firefight was over, there was no way anybody was going to separate us.

Anybody except me, that is. I had too many enemies to risk them coming after Rachel, so I gave up a permanent relationship to protect her. Didn’t work. First Victor Creed came after us, then Weapon X. You remember those bastards – the ones who’d put the adamantium on my bones and the scrambled eggs in my head. What they put Rachel through... she came out of it alive, but her mutant talents expanded under Weapon X’s brutal attempts to turn her into an assassin. Not only did Weapon X build on her own formidable martial arts skills, but they overloaded her empathy so mercilessly that she learned how to project emotions back at her attackers. She could kill with just a thought.

The X-Men who broke her out of Weapon X’s prison got caught in Rachel’s projections. She tried to target only the soldiers – most of whom killed themselves – but she didn’t know how to do that well, and the blast sliced through Jean’s mental shields. That set Scott off, and that set Xavier off, so no sooner did we pull ourselves out of that hellhole than I had to get Rachel out of the mansion before Jean unmade the universe.

Rachel may have saved Scott’s life – hell, the lives of all of us who’d gone in after her – but it probably cost the two of us any future contact with Xavier and his prize students. On top of that, Weapon X hadn’t left Rachel in much better shape than she had Jean. She picked up the emotions of anyone within half a kilometer, and she couldn’t control the projections that her talents threw out trying to protect herself, projections that could kill.

She drugged herself into a stupor long enough for me and her geek friend Daniel to get her to Sapporo, Japan, and a Zen monk who would teach her how to control her projections. I didn’t like to leave her there, but she promised to call as soon as she was stable. After a couple of months, she did, but it was a painful, frustrating conversation, as if neither of us knew what vocal chords were for. I can’t tell you her side of the conversation, but mine was as full of anger as it was empty of words, because I wanted her back and couldn’t say so. Maybe I felt guilty about bringing so much hell into her life. Maybe I didn’t like having every good thing that came along taken away from me. Whatever the reason, we hung up with enough unsaid that the air between us should’ve turned to lead.

The next morning, I heard about that jet. I made it in record time.

After a twenty-seven hour flight, I spent two hours in an all-terrain Jeep heading due east of Sapporo, past Yubari City into the Hidaka Sammyaku mountains. The first sparse snow of January drifted down. By the time the road dead-ended in the mountains, it was little wider than a dirt track rutted with old ice and fresh powder. I got out and the Jeep headed back to Sapporo. Once the sound of the engine faded, I let the weariness of the long flight fall away, breathed in the silence, and waited.

Once I’d settled, I heard her approach from uphill. A moment later, I caught her scent. She came through the trees and stood at the edge of the road, still within the forest. She wore sturdy hiking boots, jeans, and down parka, all black as was usual for her. She took off the black fur hat shielding her from the snow, revealing her raven hair as silky and as glossy as I remembered. The silver light in her eyes was banked, but it didn’t mask that trace of wildness that had first manifested back in the states, the wariness of an animal that had learned the hard way to mistrust humanity.

Before I could mourn, the wild light faded behind the warmth of her smile. I slung my duffel over my shoulder, hefted my sword box, and crossed the road.

“Hiya, darlin’.”

“I’m glad you came.”

My answer was to drop my gear, take her in my arms, and let a long kiss and a lot of pheromones tell her what words couldn’t. I was gratified that she nestled in my embrace with as much feeling. I stroked her hair. “Haven’t yet. But I can fix that anytime you want.”

Her smile was crooked, as if she weren’t used to the expression. But her jade green eyes were warm, her fingers in my long hair were gentle, and her scent revealed her want. “I did walk into that one. Come on. We’ve got a few miles to go.”

When I put her down, she replaced her hat, took up my sword box, and set a thoughtful pace uphill. The forest remained quiet and cold, but between my heavy jacket and Rachel’s welcome, I was warm enough. I kept my thoughts on what my senses picked up, and five miles passed in silence. In a level clearing appeared a traditional, rural Japanese house.

“Welcome, Logan-san,” Rachel said, lapsing into our usual Japanese as she gave me a formal bow.

I bowed back. “I thank you for inviting me as a guest, Rachel-san.”

“Please come in. The bath ought to be hot by now.”

We left our boots in the traditional chest by the door and stepped up into the entrance alcove. Rachel had placed a small calligraphy scroll in the alcove and a simple sheaf of wheat stalks beneath in absence of a flower arrangement. I didn’t read much Kanji, but I knew enough to read the glyphs on the scroll – Calm Water. Past the alcove was the public room furnished with tatami mats, a low table and cushions in one corner, a tea chest near the table, and two other chests on the opposite wall, probably one for clothing and the other for sleeping futons and quilts. It was cold inside, but Rachel turned on the kerosene heater that was typical for such houses, and warmth seeped into the room. A shoji screen in front of me led to the back of the house where a small Japanese bathing pool steamed in the quiet air. A little distance away was a privy. I shed my clothes and joined Rachel on the rock platform where we scrubbed ourselves clean. The water kept on the burner for rinsing was steaming hot and felt good when we sluiced off the soap. I was gratified to see that Rachel’s wounds had healed without scars, and she again moved with grace and elegance. The bathing platform was under the extended roof line so we avoided the snow, but the cold, just below freezing, didn’t make washing a lengthy operation, and I was quick to join Rachel in the bathing pool. My muscles eased in the penetrating warmth until I was close to purring.

Rachel smiled when my subvocalization rumbled in her bones. “This is the best part of the hike.”

“Nope.” I gathered her into my arms. As she curled against me with a sigh, something settled that had ridden me for weeks. “This is.”

Rachel didn’t speak. She didn’t have to. She was bathed in my emotions, and her scent, heart rate, and muscle tone told me what she felt. If she projected anything, it was subtle enough that I wasn’t aware of anything but calm. I looked out on the bare trees as the snow fell and wondered what I could offer to extend this moment beyond the foreseeable future.

The sky slowly darkened as we soaked in silence. Once we had warmed ourselves in the pool, I let Rachel persuade me to dry off with a warm towel. Inside, she opened the clothing chest and brought out thick, quilted kimonos and tabi socks.

Dinner was chicken and vegetables cooked on skewers on a small brazier in a fire pit set into the middle of the low table. We had several dipping sauces to spice the skewers, some fiery, some cooling. The only lights were candles in small votive glasses. As night descended, as stars rose brilliantly overhead, Rachel made tea and produced the only Western aspect of the evening – a dish of chocolate that she placed on the low table between us. I chuckled, for as remote as this place was, the chocolate was Rachel’s favorite brand of dark bittersweet baking morsels. It’d been the one treat she’d indulged in for as long as I’d known her.

“You gonna take my head off if I eat any of these? You’ve threatened to often enough.”

Chuckling, she took a single chip and slid the bowl towards me. “You can eat the whole bowl. I have what I want.”

She wasn’t talking about chocolate. I slid the bowl back towards her. “So do I, darlin’. Have at.”

She rose, opened the bedding chest, and took out a thick futon and several warm quilts. I watched her arrange the bedding in silence, savoring the ache. When she came to settle back on her cushion, I drew her into my lap instead. She munched a little of the chocolate, savoring it, feeding me a mouthful or two. In time, she blew out the candles and we burrowed into the sleeping quilts and let our body heat turn them into a sanctuary. What came after… beyond words, but not beyond emotions. Rachel’s scent, heartbeat, and warmth were as I remembered, but the sweetness of her release flooded me, and after it lingered a sensation of peace, an old pain eased.

“Too much?” Rachel whispered when I sighed.

I grinned. “Remember the first time we made love after I got you to your parents’ house?”

I felt her smile in the way her body relaxed against mine. “I was afraid I’d fry you with my projections. You said your healing factor had you covered, even though you didn’t expect to need it. And when that didn’t convince me, you said that you wanted the chance to find out what every man wants to know about his lover.”

“Whether you were fakin’ or not,” I teased.

“I wasn’t, was I?” she teased back.

“Hell, no, darlin’. Feelin’ both sides of the equation was prime. Still is.”

She snuggled against me, pleased in one sense, but disappointed in another. “So I’m still projecting.”

I stroked her hair. “It’s faint. Keep it. Works better than oysters.”

She giggled. “I’ll have to remember that.”

“I’ll remind you any time you want.”

Her body relaxed a tension I hadn’t been aware of until it was gone. “I’ve learned a lot. Most of the time, I don’t project at all. Just with strong emotion. I’ve worked a lot on the dark ones – anger, fear. I guess I have to work more on the light ones.”

“Not this one.”

We talked quietly, little more than whispers in the dark. Rachel told me of the Zen master, Roshi Timisu, who had helped her to control her projections. She was probably in her sixties, and I picked up from Rachel’s scent and body tension that while she didn’t like the master, she respected her knowledge and guidance.

“She deliberately tries to provoke me, to see if she can nettle me past controlling myself,” Rachel continued. “Things such as requiring a full obeisance when coming into her presence, or interrupting me or acting impatient. I’ve had teachers who did that, so I know how to let that slip off my back. She never gets mired in her emotions. I understand why she’s so reserved around me, because I can pick up any random thought and might potentially react very badly. She’s absolutely adamant that I stay above my emotions every second. It’s hard to keep that constant vigilance. She… I don’t know. Sometimes… maybe she doesn’t so much stay above her emotions as doesn’t have them in the first place.”

I rubbed her shoulder. “I thought that was what a lot of Zens try for, that lack of emotion.”

“Maybe,” Rachel allowed, unconvinced. “Zen never appealed to me, believe it or not. It was my mother’s path. She was warm, open, generous, quick to laugh… but her tradition was too cold, too rigid for me. I didn’t quite trust it. When my father went to temple, it was Shinto – not surprising, because he loved the outdoors so much. He used to tease my mother about how silly it was to try to cast off all emotions. But she was a very internal person. Warm without reserve to me and my father, the rest of our family, but she chose what she showed the rest of the world. She didn’t let her emotions rule her. I would never want to be the competitor who tried to negotiate against her in business. Or played poker against her.”

“Your mom played poker?”

Rachel laughed softly. “That’s how she met my father at Boston U. He heard about this woman who was the campus talent and he looked her up. At least he was smart enough not to play against her.

“But back to Roshi Timisu… she’s a good teacher, no doubt, and what I’ve learned has been a life saver for both me and everyone around me. But… if you take away the rudeness, the pressure for me to control, she’s… cold. Not a hello or good-bye. I don’t quite trust what she shows me because there’s so little there. I wonder what made her that way. Or maybe it’s just that I’m so dangerous that she can’t risk the slightest emotion with me.”

Rachel’s voice was even, thoughtful, but I heard her yearning for more than clinical instruction. I knew the feeling – a lot of mutants have a tough time finding and keeping friends. It’s hard to stay out of trouble, harder to trust anyone enough to reveal your talents, hardest to trust other mutants when you don’t know the scope of their talents. Rachel was new to her talents – hell, even being with her own kind – so the loneliness was even harder to bear. Sometimes I thought that loneliness was all that kept Rachel talking to me. The rest of her world had been stripped so bare that hanging with a hundred-year-old killer possessed of no social skills and even less patience looked like an oasis.

Rachel didn’t pick up my musings as she talked about the roshi. Cold the woman might be, but she was smart about what Rachel needed to learn. In typical Zen fashion, the woman didn’t teach Rachel to control what came into or out of her. Rather, she taught her to focus on keeping her emotions like calm water – no matter what fell into water, no matter how high the waves went, the nature of the water itself didn’t change, and eventually its inherent calmness brought it back to stillness.

Another plus – this Zen roshi hadn’t been content to let Rachel just imitate water. She’d made Rachel practice her projections, so that she learned how to target them precisely rather than broadcast at whoever was in range. Rachel had progressed well enough that it’d take a lot to force her into a barrage like what she’d directed against Cameron and his goons.

“How good are you?” I asked.

A lash of panic licked my thoughts, immediately followed by a stronger caress of euphoria. Neither raised my hackles, but they told me that Rachel could quickly project a range of emotions with precision.

“Not bad,” I conceded. “How long can you project?”

“I’ve done an hour or two at low intensity. My physical range is still about half a kilometer.”

“So now what?” I asked.

Her fingers traced over my chest, stroking my hair. Her scent and heart rate jumped, so this was a bigger question to Rachel than the words had revealed. “I don’t know yet. I won’t go back to the antiques business; it seems shallow. But what I do depends on what happens tomorrow.”

Between her cryptic remark and her body signals, I roused from my sleepy appreciation of my woman.

“What’s that mean?”

“Roshi Timisu has asked to see us tomorrow morning.”

I opened a suspicious eye. “Us? How’d she know I was comin’?”

“Because I knew you were coming. No, my talents didn’t tell me. My cell phone did. The pilot called as soon as you boarded the jet.”

I snorted. “Did you think I wouldn’t be on that plane?”

She kept stroking the hair on my chest. “I only hoped you would be, Logan. I didn’t assume.”

Her scent ratted out what was behind her words, humbling me. Sometimes the gentlest woman on the planet overwhelmed me in ways that adamantium couldn’t do a thing about. I responded without words, telling her how I cherished her.

“That was sweet,” she breathed when we’d calmed. “I hope you still feel that way tomorrow.”

“Why wouldn’t I, darlin’?”

“Because I think Roshi Timisu will ask you to roil the calm waters she’s been having me emulate.”

“Because…?”

“She knows you’re a soldier, Logan. She knows you’ve been trained to put personal feelings aside on a mission, to do what needs to be done, even if that means killing a friend to save the rest of the team. I think she’s going to ask you to try to slip past my emotional guard.”

“To see if you have the control to rejoin a world that ain’t always the kindest, eh?”

She nodded. “To see if I can guard my weakest link.”

Her feelings for me, she meant. I couldn’t help but subvocalize my distaste. This was the teacher looking out for my woman? I’d had enemies with no more scruples – in fact, Weapon X had tried to get me to sucker Rachel into killing offensively – and Roshi Timisu’s misuse of my regard for Rachel was just as unethical.

“Damn’ stupid,” I growled. “If she’s got a reason for it, then come out and say so. Tryin’ to blindside somebody backfires more’n not. Maybe you’ve got a deadly talent, Rachel, but askin’ me to be a bastard ain’t the way to test you.”

She smiled in the dark. “She won’t like hearing you say that.”

“I live for those moments.”

She stroked my chest. “I live for these. I don’t get enough of them.”

I caught her hand and kissed it. “Neither do I. To hell with tomorrow. We’ll deal with it when it gets here.”

“Okay,” Rachel whispered, and fell silent against me.

Despite Rachel’s worry, we fell asleep peacefully and quickly. If I dreamed, it was about the respite of having Rachel in my arms again.


	2. Chapter 2

The next morning, I woke slowly, full of Rachel’s drowsy peace and the rare indulgence of not having to get up. Rachel would have crawled out of bed to turn on the heater, but I knew a few ways to generate my own heat, so it was a while before we worked our way out of the quilts. Even then, I didn’t make it easy for her. It was good to tease her into giggling, into snuggling against me, allowing me the illusion of a happy life.

“We have to get up, Logan,” Rachel finally coaxed. “I want breakfast. It’s five miles to town.”

“If you’re still hungry, I can fix that –”

“Enough dessert, Logan,” Rachel laughed. “I need something in my belly before I face either the hike or Roshi Timisu.”

I steered clear of comments about the merits of filling other things besides stomachs. My pheromones told Rachel what I was thinking, because she blushed at my intent look. I got up and lit the kerosene heater while Rachel shrugged into her kimono and padded out to the privy. When she was done, I went out myself, enjoying the shock of the cold on my bare skin. The snow had stopped, the sky was lighter if not clear, and the air smelled clean and sharp. There was little wind, barely enough to stir the lightest trees branches. As I walked back inside, I smelled the warmth of miso soup and tea heating over Rachel’s small brazier. The mouthwatering aroma of pork soon rose with it. Rachel didn’t usually indulge in such a heavy breakfast, but she knew that I did to keep up with my healing factor. I dug into the bowl of pork and rice noodles that she passed me with a nod of thanks.

The food was good, but we didn’t linger over the meal because Rachel was edgy about our coming meeting with Roshi Timisu. I stowed the bedding while Rachel dealt with the dishes. Then I dressed in heavy jeans, thermal and flannel shirts, and heavy jacket.

“Am I gonna need that?” I asked, nodding at my sword box on top of the bedding chest.

Rachel hesitated. “I expect Roshi Timisu will ask us to spar, but I see no point in making it easy for her.”

“Thought you liked sparrin’, darlin’.”

“I do.” She glanced at me, then looked away as she traced a finger over the face of my sword box. “When you and I spar, it’s a joy. I’ve… become very protective of such things.”

I touched her hair. “Bet you just want the advantage of me with an unfamiliar blade.”

She laughed. “Is there any such thing, Logan-kyoshi?”

“Nope.”

“Then bring it if you want.”

We put on our boots and I picked up my sword box to follow Rachel around the mountain, away from the road. Rachel had brought our boots in before breakfast to warm by the kerosene heater, so despite the cold, we were able to move out briskly. Our path lay along a faint animal trail for a couple of miles before it switched downhill on a slightly more definite path. The last mile was along a wide footpath that was well packed from constant use. As we walked, Rachel told me about Yubari City. It’d been infamous some decades ago as a coal-mining town that had fallen on hard times when the seams had run out, and it’d had to declare bankruptcy. It’d tried to capture some of the tourist trade with an abortive attempt at an amusement park, the half-built remnants of which had stood abandoned for years before finally falling into rubble. The last parts of a large Ferris wheel had been pulled down only a couple of years ago. There was nothing to spark the world’s imagination about the city, nor a road to let it be found.

Eventually, the mutant population had discovered it as a haven exactly because it was so isolated. Slowly, in ones and twos, mutants who sought a place away from prying eyes had settled, followed by teachers such as Roshi Timisu, then small shopkeepers and artists. It still wasn’t much to look at, but as we paced slowly down the main street, I figured that the subdued appearance was by design, taking pains not to draw attention to itself. Of all the things to admire about Japanese culture, its often-poor regard for people with differences wasn’t one of them. It had one of the most homogeneous populations on earth, and a savage history of cruelty to its enemies in war, even when those enemies were its own people. So I wasn’t surprised that no one was eager to greet me until they recognized Rachel, and then quiet smiles and bows took over. I kept quiet, speaking only when spoken to, and my Japanese earned me easier regard from some, if my rough appearance didn’t.

I understood their caution, and respected it.

In the middle of a nondescript block was a quiet storefront without a sign above the door. The inside of the plate glass window was curtained with patterned gold brocade, and the small display area before the fabric held a celadon bowl with a few fresh white and yellow chrysanthemums. Whatever was beyond was hidden behind the brocade. Rachel opened the door, and we came into a small antechamber. We shed our boots, added them to the shelves where other boots were neatly lined up, and hung our coats on the line of hooks above the shelves. Rachel greeted the attendant sitting before the inner door. He was the same monk who had met Daniel and me in the airport when we’d first brought Rachel to Sapporo. He was dressed in the traditional garb of a senior student, and he looked competent to serve as guard as well as greeter.

“Good morning, Keshe-san,” Rachel bowed. “May I introduce Logan-kyoshi?”

I received a reserved bow that didn’t disguise a measuring look up and down. “Good morning, Rachel-san. An honor, Logan-kyoshi.”

“The honor is mine, Keshe-san,” I bowed back. As before, my fluent Japanese and the correct bow dispelled some of the man’s reserve.

“You are gracious, and well versed in our language,” Keshe observed, nodding with faint approval.

“Thank you,” I bowed again.

“Roshi Timisu is expecting you,” Keshe said, looking at Rachel.

Rachel’s smile was pale, but wry. “I imagine she is at her most implacable this morning.”

Keshe unbent enough to share Rachel’s smile. “I am afraid so, Rachel-san.”

She sighed. “Sooner started is sooner past,” she said softly, drawing Keshe’s rueful smile.

“She is in the small room.”

Rachel nodded and bowed. “Thank you, Keshe-san.”

He bowed back to both of us, and I replied in kind before following Rachel into the dojo proper.

The scene that greeted us was a typical Japanese martial arts school. Rachel put a hand on my arm as I scanned the few sparring pairs and several others warming up.

“This may be harder for you than me,” she breathed quietly. “She’ll try to make you mad, and she’ll know if she does. So keep things as even as you can.”

“Understood,” I replied in kind. “She can’t hurt me. So stay above whatever she tries with me.”

She smiled briefly, savoring our conspiracy, before resuming her solemn expression and her way towards the shoji screens that obscured the back of the room. When we were only a meter or so from the narrow opening between two of the screens, a dry voice met us.

“Osaka,” it announced coolly. “You may come in. And your companion.”

Rachel’s eyebrows expressed the shrug that the rest of her couldn’t before she went through the screens. I left my sword box outside the screens before following Rachel inside, and I prostrated myself beside her in the full obeisance that I’d been warned about. The roshi made us hold it longer than was polite, but I was prepared for that, as well as for the preemptory summons to approach. Rachel’s scent stayed even and calm, if wary. I followed her to approach the dragon lady, seating myself on my heels to Rachel’s right and a hair behind.

“Who are you?”

I met the teacher’s eyes squarely. She was Japanese, very lean, and taller than either Rachel or me. Maybe she was the sixty-plus that Rachel had told me about, but her lined face could’ve been any age from forty on. Her hair was thick and only lightly streaked with grey, and dressed simply in a braid down her back. Her hands were long and thin, folded with deceptive calm over her thighs. I had expected her to wear a formal kimono, but she was dressed in a simple student’s top and wrapped pants. It wouldn’t have mattered if she’d been naked, because her bearing was imperial enough to dispense with any statement her clothing might have made. The brown eyes that met mine were as cold as Rachel had described, but their fierceness snapped me to full alert. This was going to be a fight, even if all I did for the next hour was sit.

I bowed correctly, formally, without emotion. “I am Logan.”

“Logan what?” she riposted without heat.

“Just Logan.”

“That is all the name you bear?”

I saw what Rachel meant. There was nothing untoward in what the teacher asked me, and everything in her subtle, denigrating tone. The trick was to stay focused on what I wanted to convey and ignore the noise.

“It is enough.”

“Why do you sit behind Osaka? Do you consider yourself inferior?”

She would have challenged me if I’d sat myself in front of Rachel or exactly even with her. “I consider myself both your guest, Roshi Timisu, and Osaka-san’s.”

“Why are you here?”

Never mind that she’d asked me here. “I thank you for the training Osaka-san has received from you to control her projections.”

“She has not learned enough.”

“Everybody’s got room for improvement, Roshi. Osaka-san has learned enough not to kill when she doesn’t want to, and that’s somethin’ from where I sit.”

“Does she frighten you?”

“She’s raised my hackles a few times, as I have hers, with good reason in both cases. Maybe that’s why you’re so harsh, because she’s frightened you, too, and you understand why she needs to control herself so completely.”

She leaned forward with an intensity that carried no heat in it, but her scent told me that I’d struck a nerve. “You presume –”

“I don’t presume anythin’, Roshi. But if Osaka-san’s talents don’t frighten you, then you’re a fool, and you don’t impress me as a fool. So why don’t you stop tryin’ to needle me and come to the point of why you wanted me here with Osaka-san.”

She sat back, again without heat. “You are not unknown to me, Logan. You are the Wolverine, a man with a deadly profession and dubious associations, a man whose temper is often not under his control. Your place in the world puts Osaka at risk enough, but your lack of control puts her at an even more terrible risk. I question whether your association with her is not merely an indulgence on your part, without acknowledgement or understanding of that terrible risk.”

I’d asked myself that question many times. “She’s got the means to protect herself if I lose control.”

“I do not speak of mere physical injury. Your lack of emotional control has already put her trust in you under great strain. Do you know that?”

When I looked at Rachel, she sat impassively beside me, not looking at me, her scent telling me that she hovered above whatever emotions the roshi tried to induce in her. I thought about what nerve Rachel had shown in the woods of Alberta when she faced me after I’d been reduced to a beaten animal. If I hadn’t scared the shit out of her then, then I never would.

“I know it,” I admitted. “And no matter the reasons why, she’s honored me with her trust a dozen times. More than I deserved.”

“Exactly what you deserved, Logan-kyoshi,” Rachel said, glancing at me before turning her regard back to the roshi. “It’s what you deserve from anyone, and what you deserve now.”

Maybe that was a dig at the roshi, but Roshi Timisu didn’t react other than to shake her head. “It is not enough. Promises made are never enough. Trust is never enough. You will betray each other if that is all you have between you.”

Rachel and I looked at each other. “Then what is enough?” Rachel shrugged. Her voice was even, but if this was the koan the roshi meant for her to consider, she didn’t understand it. I didn’t, either, but I never claimed to fathom the merits of the world in a flower or the sound of a hand, either.

“You expected me to ask you to spar,” the Roshi said evenly. "I will meet your expectation. Perhaps the answer will come to you as you face each other.”

I retrieved my katana from its box while Rachel fetched hers. The roshi gave us no direction, so Rachel and I spent a few minutes tracing familiar figures to limber up. In short order, we squared off to spar.

Both of us began conservatively to take the measure of each other after so much time apart. Rachel was wary, not so much of me as of a situation she didn’t trust. But before long, we were sparring at close to field speed, trading blows with the matched two-body blades Rachel had found for us a lifetime ago. While I didn’t forget the roshi’s presence, I began to enjoy the dance with my lady, getting into the rhythm of the blows back and forth, savoring the joy that we shared in the danger of the steel. Rachel didn’t smile, but I sensed in her scent that she, too, enjoyed the exchange.

Soon enough we eased out of our conservative approach. Rachel winged her katana through my guard with a wicked dive, which I parried and followed with an equally lethal riposte. She parried that, and launched an attack with the swiftness of a cobra –

My sight blurred in an overwhelming barrage of pain and my legs went dead. My katana fell from nerveless fingers as Rachel’s blade slashed straight for my neck. I couldn’t even brace myself for the slice that would cut my throat –

Rachel managed to deflect her blow. I didn’t see how, but I heard her breath hiss through her teeth when she sprained her wrist. Though the edge of her katana left a trail of red across my throat, it wasn’t deep. She dropped her blade and was at my side before I hit the ground. As the wound healed before her eyes, she understood that her blade had done so little damage only because of her inhumanly fast reactions and my healing factor.

Despite that, my sight refused to clear and my legs stayed dead. I couldn’t breathe. It’d been a long time since anything had incapacitated me past what my healing factor could overcome. I panicked – what if my nerves stayed dead –

Roshi Timisu sat before us, waiting to see what her treachery would bring.

Rachel’s eyes went molten silver. To her credit, I smelled her fury, heard her heart race, but she didn’t project.

“Stop it, Roshi. Stop your projections. Stop them now.”

Roshi Timisu sat immobile, but her eyes bored into Rachel with unblinking intensity.

“What would it have accomplished if I had injured him as you so clearly wanted?” Rachel snarled. “And what is the point of hurting him now?”

Roshi Timisu waited, her implacable face infuriating in its arrogance.

“Did you want to see if grief or horror would cause me to project? If I would take out my fury out on you for your treachery?”

Still nothing.

“Then have your answer,” Rachel spat. I felt the edges of her projection, a tightly focused blast of anger directed only at the roshi, more a statement of what she held in reserve than actual pain, though the teacher’s face twitched as she received the rebuke.

Still the roshi sat immobile. More importantly, the lack of oxygen was greying what little of my vision remained. My diaphragm spasmed uncontrollably as my lungs fought for air, and my brain was scrabbling to let my beast out. Rachel’s scent flooded with desperation.

“Let him go!” she shouted. “I beg of you, let him go!”

Still nothing. Rachel’s heart rate soared.

“Damn you!” Rachel swore, and her projections rose around her like a cloud. It was not a storm of fury that lashed out at the teacher, but a sharp, surgical blast of fear that struck the teacher with all the precision of her katana. It was powerful beyond my understanding, but it broke the hold on me and tore a gasp from the roshi’s throat. As Rachel’s projection faded, oxygen again flowed into my starved lungs. My vision cleared and feeling returned to my legs. A new projection rose, Rachel impossibly finding enough calm to salve my fury that was so close to exploding. I hung on to that calm to keep the beast caged.

“Is that answer enough for you?” Rachel snarled as Roshi Timisu fought to catch her breath, and I fought to make Rachel’s projected calm my own. “If your purpose was to teach me to control my projections no matter what, then you have succeeded. But you owe both of us an apology for how you chose to test your teaching!”

Rachel tried to help me to my feet, but I waved her aside and picked myself up. Rachel was all for collecting our blades and leaving, and I understood her need. But I decided to gamble on what Roshi Timisu’s scent told me.

“Osaka-san did better than you, didn’t she?”

Roshi Timisu’s eyes skewered mine, but they weren’t so implacable now. They widened, and she drew a quick breath in that she didn’t release.

Rachel paused beside me, confused by my blunt question as well as her teacher’s sudden vulnerability. “I did what?”

“That’s why she’s been so closed to you. You passed the test that she failed.” I flicked a glance at the roshi. “Didn’t she?”

Roshi Timisu closed her eyes at my harshness. “How did you know?”

“I can smell it on you. Shame that you failed. Anger that Osaka-san didn’t. More shame because of your anger. So let’s have it.”

Roshi Timisu seemed to grow smaller, though her body didn’t move. At length she lifted a hand in concession.

“As you learned, my talent is a special kind of projection. Physical, living bodies obey my commands, even down to the autonomic systems. When my talent manifested as a teenager, I reveled in it. I thought that I could abandon myself in it and then rise above it when I wanted to – except that I didn’t want to rise above it, and so didn’t practice that rising nearly enough. My teacher struggled to teach me control because I didn’t take it seriously. I knew nothing about grounding myself. When I fell in love, it was the headiest thing I’d ever felt, and I never wanted it to end, so I didn’t rise above that, either. So when my teacher set my lover and me to spar just as I did you, I lost myself in the heat and the joy of the match and our love and was not prepared when my teacher incapacitated my lover. I’d given myself to my emotions so completely that I was not able to divert my blow, and my lover died in my arms. Grief, fury, and shock overwhelmed me, and once again, I didn’t want to rise above my talent. I turned my projection on my teacher without the precision that you have mastered, Osaka-san. He died, as well. I was not judged for murder, as I should have been, only manslaughter. I served the proscribed time for it. When I was released, I set about mastering myself so that I could help others master themselves.”

“Maybe you hoped that Osaka-san would take your life,” I growled.

She shrugged. “It would have offered the proper justice.”

“At what price to the instrument?” Rachel spat. Her eyes glowed so brightly that she cast shadows. “There is no honor in it, no respect, no excuse – a misuse of those you claim to teach!”

Rachel turned her back on Roshi Timisu, pausing only long enough to take up her katana still streaked with my blood. I expected her to storm out of the dojo, but at the screen, she turned back to the teacher with black anger in her eyes.

“You haven’t learned anything. You’re still lost in your grief, and you let it misuse your students. Stop before someone gets hurt.”

I whuffed in emphatic agreement, then collected my katana. I followed Rachel out, pausing at the screen to look back at the teacher who sat contemplating her hands with deceptive calm.

“If you want to honor your tradition,” I growled, drawing the teacher’s eyes, “then listen to what she said. Resign. Learn. Don’t take the easy way out with a wakizashi.”

The pain in the roshi’s eyes was all the reward I needed, and I savored it as I left the dojo, because it was the pain of a wiser woman, roshi no more.

When I got outside, I followed Rachel’s scent down the street and into a side alley. She was wiping my blood off her katana with the flat of her hand, then licking her hand clean. The sharpness of the blade made such a thing precarious, and I suspected that some of the blood was hers.

“What’re you doin’?” I asked.

Rachel’s voice was low and full of anger, but her hands were steady. “I’m not wasting your blood on anything from this place. Not a rag, not the snow, nothing.”

I caught her hand, and sure enough, a thin slice traced across her palm. I licked it clean. “Don’t waste yours, either. The blade’s clean enough. Wipe it dry and let’s get outa here.”

She used the hem of her shirt to remove the last stain of moisture. She was awkward because of her sprained wrist, so I sheathed the katana and put it in its box for her. I took her scarf, scooped up some snow, and wound the scarf around her wrist with the snow packed between the layers to keep the injury from swelling. Then we headed back up the mountain.

I’ll give Rachel this – she didn’t project a single emotion during our return trip. I didn’t need them to tell me how angry she was, because her scent, her heart rate, the bow of her spine told me. It wasn’t just Roshi Timisu’s rotten trick that upset her, but I let her work through it without comment. Truth be told, I hadn’t liked being the hostage to Rachel’s emotional control, but she’d come through with grace and strength. Like Rachel’s projected calm, her success cooled my anger, and so did my curiosity about what torqued her.

We reached Rachel’s house in the early afternoon, but the sky was overcast and grey, so it looked to be later than it was. Rachel finally turned towards me at the door.

“I am so sorry, Logan-san,” she murmured. “If I had guessed what Roshi Timisu had planned, I never would have brought you there.”

I shrugged and reached for her sprained wrist. She let me unwind my makeshift bandage and shake the snow out of it. “Wasn’t fun. But you handled things real well. You even kept my beast from berserkin’. I thank you for that.”

She took her scarf from me, both accepting my thanks and regretting the need for what she’d done.

“I’ve told you before, darlin’. It’s one thing to regret circumstances. But don’t regret what you did.”

She looked away because something ate at her gut that she didn’t want to reveal. “I don’t. But…”

I let her unlace her boots and put them in the box. I followed suit, and we came inside to crank up the kerosene heater. After a few minutes, it was warm enough to shed my coat, but I didn’t stop there. I was hungry, but I wanted a bath more than I wanted a meal. Fortunately, the bathing pool was still warm, so I turned the heater up. Once she saw what I was doing, she thought about joining me, but looked torn.

“C’mon, darlin’.”

She traced a finger across my neck where her blade had cut. “I think she would have done what she did whether I’d managed such a blow or not.”

“Yup. It was a good blow, though. Good thing I didn’t parry it the way it deserved.”

Her smile was pale. “Are you saying that I would’ve gotten more than a sprained wrist?”

I started unbuttoning her shirt. “Big bruises. Real big.”

I got her undressed and led her to the pool. We scrubbed and rinsed, then settled in the hot water for an extended soak. I curled around Rachel in my lap, shut my eyes, and let go.

“But…?” I murmured after a while.

She didn’t pretend to misunderstand me, but all I got from her was silence and a quick scent of anger. I kept my eyes shut and grinned, because the anger wasn’t directed at me.

“Y’know, havin’ a lady who talks less than I do is –”

“As big a pain in the ass as having a lover who can read me like a book,” Rachel interrupted with more vehemence than humor.

“I was gonna say a luxury. It’s a lot easier to figure you out when you stick to smells and body language.” I nuzzled her hair. “A lot easier to calm you down, too.”

Between my caresses and the warm water, Rachel relaxed. “Don’t you think about anything else?”

“It’s how I’m wired, darlin’. You put me naked in a hot tub with my equally naked woman, and my animal senses take over. You complainin’?”

“No.”

“Didn’t think so. So…”

She sighed. “We agreed not to keep secrets, but this isn’t exactly a secret. It’s… more of a regret.”

I hummed acceptance in her ear.

“It’s stupid.”

“You don’t get torqued about stupid things.”

“Then it’s unrealistic, which is the same as stupid.”

“Enough stallin’, woman.”

She sighed again before she clamped down on her emotions. “I liked it here, Logan. It’s quiet, peaceful, away from people… I had… started to think… maybe it would be a sanctuary for you, too.”

Roshi Timisu couldn’t know how painful it was to want what Rachel offered and know I’d never have it. A normal life had never been my lot, and a lot of things meant that it never would be. Rachel knew them all. It wouldn’t help to remind her.

“Appreciate the thought, darlin’.”

She tensed briefly, but let it go. “It doesn’t matter now.”

It did matter, but I didn’t say so. I let her grieve in my arms, savoring her sentiment all the more because it was the best I was going to get.

After a long time, Rachel’s muscles uncoiled. She stroked my arms around her.

“It’s supposed to be such a big world, but sometimes it doesn’t feel like it. Neither of us is welcome at the Xavier Institute anymore. I don’t want to stay here. I don’t want to go back to New York or Seattle or San Francisco.”

“Still leaves a lot of the world.”

She hummed noncommittally. “Maybe it doesn’t matter where I go. I’ve long since lost the sense of having roots in any place. I suppose my parents’ estate is the only one left.”

I was the last person to talk about roots. If I’d ever had any, they’d been lost in the scramble of my brains in a Weapon X tank decades ago. One place was like another, as transient as the people I outlived. I’d outlive Rachel all too soon –

Rachel stirred beside me. “I’m turning into a prune. I’ll find something for lunch.”

She squeezed my thigh before climbing out. She wrapped a towel around herself and slipped inside.

She’d read my emotions as clearly as if I’d written them down, and musing about leaving her wasn’t what a woman who grieved needed.

It was a hell of a time to be this far away from the Danger Room. We both needed it.

I did the next best thing given the circumstances, and climbed out of the bathing pool. I didn’t bother with a towel, but took myself off to a flat rock in the woods and perched there on my heels, letting the cold soak into my bones and focus my thoughts.

Was I so much of a coward that I hid behind my healing factor? My lack of memories? Or was it just old habit to invest nothing of myself in any place, any time, any person? Despite everything, Rachel was my woman because she wanted to be, and all I could think about was outliving her. Maybe I didn’t take what she offered because I didn’t want her to see how I made my living. Maybe I didn’t want to watch her age. Maybe I was realistic because my enemies had struck at her so many times, and one day they’d take her down. Maybe I was afraid to try for what I wanted –

“Logan.”

I started. It was rare that I was so absorbed that I didn’t hear someone come up behind me.

“Logan. You’ve been out here for two hours. You must be frozen. Come back inside.”

“Cold doesn’t affect me like it does you, darlin’. I’m okay.”

“You’ve got icicles hanging off your backside and your hair is frozen. Please come back inside. Or at least get in the bathing pool. I won’t bother you.”

I swiveled my head to look at her. She’d wrapped herself in a quilted kimono, gathering up the fabric so that the hem didn’t drag in the snow. Her sturdy boots and wool socks stuck out incongruously from under the soft fabric. The kimono had slipped from her shoulder and her hair had fallen into her eyes. From the ankles up, she could’ve been a geisha. What she was from head to toes was my lover, my woman, and more willing to take a risk than I was.

“You wanna go to Canada?”

Her eyes widened. “What for?”

I shrugged. “No reason.”

“No reason?”

“You said you didn’t want to stay here. Canada’s not here.”

“Where in Canada?”

“Place I have. Ain’t much. Needs work.”

Her scent shifted too fast for me to read her emotions. “Who else knows where it is?”

“It ain’t that place in Alberta. Place I’ve never talked about.”

She brushed her hair back again and shrugged the sleeve of her kimono back up on her shoulder. “Okay.”

When I straightened out of my crouch, the ice coating me cracked and crumbled into shards as I followed her inside.

I hadn’t answered my questions, but maybe I’d taken the first step towards a different karma.


	3. Chapter 3

It took a couple of days to arrange our exit from Japan, but not on Rachel’s account. She was very efficient about dispensing with possessions, maybe because of all of her years in the antique business where things came and went through her hands like trains through a rail station. It took her just two hours to sort through the stuff in her house and pack the few things she wanted to take – several of her quilted kimonos, a few clothes, the porcelain teapot and cups, the small iron brazier. When I asked her what she wanted the brazier for, she looked enigmatic.

“You said your place in Canada needs work.”

I shrugged a concession. “Does, but that ain’t why you’re cartin’ it.”

She shrugged back. “It’s to remind myself to stay simple. My mother had to have a kitchen full of high-end appliances and a specialty tool for every dish. Sometimes a good set of knives and a pot or two are all you need.”

“You got blades,” I nodded at Rachel’s sword box, grinning. “So you gonna pack up the pots, too?”

“Not unless you want to haul them down to the road for me,” she said, wrapping the teapot in a sweater and stowing it in one of the two packs she had ready at the door.

“What, I look like a mule?”

She turned a considering look on me, deliberately thoughtful. “More like a wolf.”

“Funny, kid. You’re lucky I agreed to carry one of those as it is.”

“I am,” she agreed with a smile. “So whenever the plane can get to Sapporo, I will appreciate your indulgence regardless of what you look like.”

I smirked. Teasing Rachel was no fun when she kept lobbing compliments back at me. “Any word on when that might be?”

She shook her head. “The company jet got in yesterday morning with some of the developers for a series of big design meetings, but it’s not clear when they’ll be heading back. If they stay over a week, then we can hitch a ride back home. If they stay less than that, then the jet is theirs, and we can book a commercial flight. It’s just a lot quicker getting the katanas through customs with the private jet, because there are fewer people coming through at the same time.”

“In the mean time, we’ll just have to find a place in Sapporo with a hot tub.”

She laughed as she shouldered her pack and the brazier in its bag. I took up the other, my duffel, and both sword boxes, and we headed out. Rachel started through the woods without a backward look.

We waited by the road at the spot where Rachel had met me. Rachel hadn’t had any interest in catching the car in Yubari City, so clear was her distaste for what had happened there. So we talked quietly in the cold for an hour or so until a familiar Jeep trundled into view. We piled our gear in the back and got in for the trip back to Sapporo. Once we reached the airport, Rachel checked on the status of her family’s company jet, and we found ourselves in luck. The software developers who had arrived earlier this morning had already decided that they needed at least two weeks to work out whatever issues there were, so after the routine maintenance check, all we needed was a fresh pilot. I was licensed and could have done the honors myself, but it wasn’t my place to horn in. We had a leisurely lunch about two in the afternoon in one of the fancy lounges I’d never had the connections to get into, and then headed to the tarmac as afternoon waned.

Rachel fell asleep not long after the plane took off. One of the advantages of a private jet is that the reclining seats offer a lot more comfort than what you find in the cramped cattle cars of the commercial flights that are my usual lot. I dozed nearby, never going completely under, but it was certainly more restful than sitting up all night. The air was quiet enough that the plane slid smoothly though the air. The top rim of the sun was just about to edge over the horizon when we came to the coast of British Columbia. I couldn’t see the land beneath us because a thick bank of clouds covered it. Rachel roused slowly to greet me with a sleepy smile.

“Where are we?” she asked over the jet noise.

“B.C.”

She hummed understanding. She headed to the loo and came back looking more awake. She was about to dig through her bag for something to eat when her eyes widened. The jolt of her scent brought me up sharp.

“What?”

“The pilot,” she told me. “Something’s wrong.”

I bolted for the pilot’s compartment, shoved the door open to find the guy slumped over the controls. I put a hand on his neck, got nothing. I squirmed my way into the copilot’s seat.

“What’s wrong?” Rachel gulped.

“Dead. Maybe a heart attack. Good thing the plane’s on auto pilot –”

“Can you fly this?” Rachel asked.

“Should be able to.” A quick scan of the instruments was reassuring –

The fuel gauge was falling to zero. We were over land, but land in the middle of nowhere, and the fuel was draining out of the tanks because the guy had hit the switch when he passed out. I slammed the tanks shut with a curse.

“What?” Rachel asked.

“Guy dumped the fuel. You keep parachutes on this thing?”

“I’ll look.”

Rachel’s voice was calm, but she scrambled back into the cabin without delay. I heard her tearing open all the compartments.

“No!” she shouted.

“The pilot’s wearin’ an emergency chute. When I get it off him, you put it on!”

As we dipped below the clouds, I unbuckled the chute from the pilot’s body, wrestled it off, and tossed it back into the passenger compartment. Then I looked at how much fuel was left and what the terrain below me offered for landing sites. When the fuel went, the jet would drop like a stone.

“What about you?” Rachel grabbed the chute and pulled it over her coat. “Can’t we go down together?”

“I weigh too much,” I told her shortly. “You wouldn’t survive when we hit the ground. So put the damn’ thing on!”

Rachel didn’t argue with words, but her scent was rank with fear. She scrambled into the pilot’s compartment, one of her bags slung across her chest and the parachute strapped on over top. “Is it on right? I’ve never parachuted before –”

“You got it on right. Try to follow me down. Steer by pullin’ on the back risers – the straps from your harness to the canopy. Pull left to go left, right to go right. Keep your knees bent and roll when you hit the ground.”

“Logan –”

“Ain’t my preference, darlin’, but most likely I’ll live through it, if I can find a place to ditch that ain’t too rough –”

The plane gave a violent lurch – the fuel was almost out. I bolted out of the seat, dragging Rachel behind me. She stood by me as I wrenched the hatch lever. The plane lurched again when I got the thing open. Then I wrestled Rachel forward.

“Logan –”

“Count three and pull!” I shouted, putting her hand on the release cord.

“Logan – !”

I threw Rachel out of the plane. If she screamed, I didn’t hear it. I was too busy trying to wrestle the plane’s nose up. I flipped on the radio.

“Any tower within range, this is India Gulf niner three headin’ one hundred degrees southeast. Fifty-two degrees latitude, one hundred twenty-seven degrees longitude. Pilot is dead, probable heart attack. We are out of fuel and goin’ down. Repeat, fifty-two degrees latitude, one hundred twenty-seven degrees longitude, course one hundred degrees southeast – aw, shit –”

With the last gasp of fuel, the plane shuddered. I yanked on the controls and got the plane running parallel to the side of a mountain that curved gently. I got off one more quick radio burst before the ground rose up to smack me. Then that gently curving mountain face grabbed me like a grizzly –


	4. Chapter 4

When Logan threw me out of the plane, the turbulence from the sputtering jet engine tore the scream out of my mouth and tossed me around like a bird in a hurricane. For too many seconds I tumbled over and over, not even sure where earth and sky were. I didn’t remember pulling the ripcord, but a powerful jerk tore the breath from my body. As the parachute billowed above me, the jet careened below me like a stone, barely missing the mountain before falling over it and down the farside slope. I grabbed the straps that hooked me to the parachute – the risers that Logan had talked about. I jerked on the back right one, and sure enough, the parachute dipped right after the jet. I took firm hold of both risers and pulled them alternately, trying to direct myself after the jet. The wind helped, blowing in roughly the same direction as the jet’s path. I sailed over the ridge that the jet had barely avoided, coming over a slope to see the path of a small river. The river made a narrow break between the trees and had a thin span of rocky shore. That seemed a safer place to land than the treetops. I tugged again on the risers.

When the jet crashed, I screamed a denial, barely noticing the lack of smoke or flames. When it registered, I didn’t have time to care because the ground rushed up at me with all the speed of a freight train. I clutched the risers and pulled up my knees. The good news was that I didn’t fall into the trees, but by the edge of the river. The bad news was that the shore was nothing but rocks and dead storm wrack, and I didn’t bend one knee enough. The ankle I landed on buckled in agony as soon as it touched the ground, and the rest of me crashed hard into the rocks. The parachute pulled me head over heels and I whacked the back of my head hard enough to see stars. I couldn’t keep the parachute from dragging me towards the water, and my body caught on innumerable sticks and stumps that pounded me like the fists of a mob. Finally, just a few meters from the water, the parachute strings got tangled in the jutting remains of a stump, and I lay there panting for long seconds. My ankle was on fire. When I opened my eyes, the world reeled around me in a sickening whirl. I didn’t do anything but lie trapped in the chute straps and pant.

I don’t know how much time passed before the pain in my ankle faded and my head cleared. Eventually I got myself turned around and fought to pull the parachute down to the stony bank. Once it settled below the breeze, I caught my breath. I was freezing. I pulled my fur hat out of my bag and pulled it firmly down on my head. Then I pulled on my mittens. I felt warmer in seconds.

Enough lollygagging. Logan was in the jet. I had to get to him.

I staggered to my feet, and gingerly put weight on my sore ankle. It held. I dragged the parachute canopy towards me, unclipping myself from the fabric only when I had wrapped it into a manageable roll. I threw it over my shoulder and turned up the face of the ridge.

It took way too long to get to the wreck. It was up the ridge and over the other side, and there were no trails or paths to follow. Now that I was on the ground, I had no hints of where the plane had crashed until I crested the ridge. The sun was hidden behind clouds, so I was lucky to see a faint glint at the corner of my vision that suggested metal. I toiled upward, finally stumbling close enough to spot the shattered remains of the jet.

As I hurried towards the wreck, I told myself that I would not cry. Logan was not going to be dead when I got to him. He Was Not.

If I’d expected to find Logan’s remains in the copilot seat, I was quickly disabused of that. All that remained of the jet’s nose, the instruments, or the cockpit was rubble. The tail section of the plane was crumpled and broken. Only the middle of the fuselage was recognizable. The top was split and a huge gash rent its side. There were neither flames nor heat, the only benefit of the dumped fuel. I started to clamber into the black gaping hole –

There would be a lot of blood inside. Animals would soon come after it. I needed to minimize what got on me. I took off my coat and mittens and left them in the snow with my bag. Then I climbed into the wreck.

As I expected, the remains of the pilot were nothing but torn pulp in the cockpit rubble. Logan was blood-soaked shreds of meat tangled in what remained of the seats. My expectations didn’t prepare me for what that really meant. My throat closed at the horrific carnage, but I got a tight hold on my stomach and forced myself to his side.

One arm was almost completely severed. Only the adamantium on his skeleton kept the bone from snapping, but the flesh around it was shredded, and the blood pumping out was sluggish. I started to untangle his arm from the wreckage, but my first aid training took over – I should treat Logan’s core wounds first. I eased intestines back inside his abdomen and held the edges of the wounds together until they closed. I suspect his spine was broken as well, because as I worked on his torso, his body subtly straightened and aligned without help from me. Then I got his arm free of the wreckage and tore away the ripped shirtsleeve that still clothed it. I tried to align the torn muscles, holding things in place with my eyes shut because looking at Logan’s mangled body was too horrible. To my utmost joy, his healing factor kept working, slowly knitting the pieces together. I kept my hands in place for a few minutes longer to be sure that the join would hold when I let go.

Both of Logan’s knees and ankles were dislocated and nearly separated, and a lot of tendons were severed. I aligned everything as best as I could, again trying to ease everything into the right places. Each bit took time, surely because of the severity of so many wounds, but I was grateful that Logan’s body responded at all.

The worst wound to face was the dangling eyeball, because there was no way to distance myself from the very human nature of what had happened to Logan. I almost couldn’t bring myself to touch it because I was afraid I’d rupture it. My fingers shook, and not just from the cold, as I tried to ease it back into its orbit. The flesh around the orbit had swollen badly and I didn’t think I’d get the eyeball back in. I pushed harder, praying that the orb wouldn’t explode under the pressure. Blessedly it went back into place.

I don’t know how much time passed before Logan was more or less in one piece. But so much of his blood had pumped out that I wasn’t sure there was enough left to keep him alive. His heart still beat, if erratically, and there was nothing I could do to help it other than hope.

The next thing I needed to do was to get Logan out of the plane, cleaned up, and away from all the blood that would surely attract scavengers.

It took a few minutes to clear the fragments of the plane’s interior from between Logan’s body and the opening. Along the way, I found both of my packs. My clothes were strewn around and the teapot was broken, but one of the cups was still whole. I stuffed the clothing back into the torn bag and tied it together with some of the parachute string, then tossed the packs outside. I also found Logan’s duffel and our sword boxes. The boxes were in pieces, and my katana had snapped halfway down its length, but both of Logan’s blades remained intact. I didn’t dwell on my broken blade. I had three whole ones, and I needed to get Logan out of the wreck and into better shelter.

The only thing that helped me haul Logan out of the plane was the slight downhill cant to the wreckage. It was all I could do to drag him closer to the gashed fuselage, one centimeter at a time. The torn metal at the edge was sharp, too, and if I just dragged him over the side down to the ground, that metal would slice him to bits. But there was nothing for it. I was too lightweight to provide brute force. I wedged a piece of metal over the worst of the jagged edges, so when I tugged and strained fit to burst, Logan tumbled onto the ground not too much worse for wear. Still panting, I cut off what was left of his clothes, and hurriedly scrubbed him with snow until I’d cleaned as much blood from him as I could.

The amount of blood that stained the snow around him frightened me. I scraped as much of the bloody snow into a pile as I could and piled clean snow over it, hoping that that would make it harder for predators to smell it. I hurried – Logan’s breathing was shallow, and his heart rate was quicker than it should be. Then I remembered him squatting naked and covered in ice behind my house in Yubari City. Now that he wasn’t bleeding, his healing factor would preserve him from the cold for a short time while I rigged shelter and fire. I scavenged a strip of carpeting from the plane and rolled Logan onto it. Then I found clean, dry clothes and managed to get jeans, socks, and two shirts onto his inert body. I wrapped two of my padded kimonos and a couple of foil emergency blankets around Logan snugly, then one of his flannel shirts around his head to keep heat loss to a minimum. Finally, I tied the carpeting to him for insulation. All that remained was to drag him to shelter – something I didn’t have yet.

The mountainside sloped gently down. The sky was too overcast for me to find east, so I dug into the bag I’d left with my coat. Ever since Victor Creed had attacked me, I’d traded a normal woman’s purse for what amounted to a bag of emergency gear. In addition to the foil blankets I’d wrapped around Logan, I had a fold-up poncho, a sewing kit, my cell phone, a small GPS system, a waterproof canister of matches, another of aspirin, extra batteries, and a couple of protein bars in addition to the usual coin purse, wallet, and hankie. My cell phone hadn’t survived my parachute drop, but the GPS unit had, and it showed me that the slope I stood on faced southeast. Lucky, that – I’d be able to make the most of what warmth the sun would bring once the clouds cleared. The lat and long readings told me that I was in British Columbia, not too far off the coast.

I wanted a shelter site away from the wreck to distance us from the scent of blood, strong even to my nose. Logan weighed three times as much as I did – close to 150 kilos. If I had to get him away from the wreck, downhill would be easier. I scanned the area around me, and didn’t see any scavengers yet. I scrubbed my hands in the snow until they were free of blood, then shivered back into my coat and mittens. The insulating down was welcome after so long in the wreck.

I risked venturing away from Logan long enough to find a spot about 100 meters from the wreck that wasn’t so sloped. It was relatively free of rocks and trees, and between it and the wreck were a lot of deciduous saplings. I could use the saplings and the parachute canopy to build a teepee. I hurried back to Logan and thought about how best to get him to the site. Then I had to build the teepee and find the makings of fire and animal snares, all while watching for predators –

I was overwhelming myself.

Logan was stable for the moment. That meant that the most important thing for me to do was manage my own mental and physical resources. So despite all the things that needed doing, I sat next to Logan and let some snow melt in my mouth for moisture. Snow isn’t the ideal choice of hydration in a cold climate because of its heat drain, but it was what I had. I dug in my bag and found a protein bar to munch. I chewed it slowly, forcing myself to rest for several minutes. While I ate, I thought about how to drag Logan down the hill.

It took a lot of trial and error. Eventually I thought to tie his wrists together, then loop several strands of parachute string through the bindings, then use the strings as a harness over my shoulders. That let me use my legs to drag with, not just my arms.

I am embarrassed at how long it took me to drag Logan those 100 meters. This was wilderness – no paths, no open spaces, and a lot of underbrush. Every branch, every twig, every rock seemed to catch on the carpet or his body, and I tripped in the snow more times than I can count. Several times, I had to throw a stick or wave a blade at a circling fox or vulture. Thank goodness, there were no wolves. It took hours, and by the time I got Logan to my chosen spot, I was exhausted. I sat for a few more minutes of rest and snow melt, but I couldn’t afford a long respite. I had to build a shelter.

I went back to the wreckage for the gear I’d set aside earlier. I spotted vultures landing in the trees, and others sailing overhead as ghostly grey silhouettes. The shadows of more serious predators flitted around the wreck. The smell of blood would overwhelm their caution of me soon, so I overloaded myself to drag everything down in a single trip down to Logan, gratified that I had so much to work with. I piled the packs and duffel on either side of Logan, hoping that they provided a little more insulation against the cold.

The katanas and wakizashis weren’t forged to chop wood, but they were certainly sharp and strong enough to do so. It didn’t take long to find about ten straight saplings, each about fifteen feet long. I hacked them down and dragged them to the site. Parachute strings became lashings, and I soon had three of the saplings up in a tripod. Before I placed the other saplings, I used a scrap of metal from the wreck to scrape the snow out from under the tripod, then the dead leaves and forest detritus until I had bare dirt exposed. Then all but the last three of the saplings then went up.

Small flakes of snow started to fall. My first reaction was to hurry and complete my makeshift teepee, but again, I thought about what made sense. Despite the cold, I was sweating. I didn’t want to lose too much water through sweat. I sucked on more snow to keep myself hydrated, and I unzipped my coat partway to lower my body temperature. While I rested, I checked on Logan. He was still unconscious, but his wounds didn’t seem so raw and angry. He was healing, if slowly.

I arranged the parachute canopy on the ground and folded it in half into a rough semicircle. The two layers of fabric would give me a windbreak. With more parachute string, I tied the center of the diameter to one sapling and fought to raise the awkward weight onto the apex of the saplings. Then I tied the trailing ends of the diameter to the last two saplings. I pulled the first around the saplings in one direction, then the other around in the other direction. Where they overlapped became the downhill-pointing doorway into my teepee. At the apex of the tripod, I arranged the last two saplings with their edges of the canopy so that they made smoke flaps and an opening for the fire I hoped to build inside.

I scraped snow over the bottom edge of the teepee to anchor it. Now to drag Logan inside –

Damn! I hadn’t made a floor for the teepee. I needed insulation between our bodies and the frozen dirt. I scanned the trees around me. Farther down, I thought I saw pines. I took one of the kimonos from Logan and headed for the green that glimmered through the snow. Before long, I had piled small, fresh branches on the blanket. I hauled the load up to the teepee, dumped it inside, and returned for two more loads. Then I found small saplings, and used short lengths of tough, dry wood to pin the saplings into a box for the pine branches. I put the emergency blanket on top. Only then did I drag Logan into the teepee and roll him onto the blanket.

By this time, my arms and legs felt like lumber, and I was shivering. No wonder – the temperature was below freezing and my shirt was soaked with sweat. I got up with a groan, dragged all of our gear into the teepee, then exchanged my wet shirt for a clean, dry one. Once I put my sweater, coat, hat, and mittens back on, I felt better. I used parachute string to rig a clothesline between two of the saplings holding up the teepee and hung up my shirt to dry. Then I sucked more snow and ate part of another protein bar while I rested beside Logan.

When my breathing had calmed and my heart had stopped laboring, I pulled out my GPS. It was mid afternoon, so I’d been working hard for about six hours. I probably had only three or four hours of daylight left. I needed fire and food. I wasn’t worried about the fire, because I had plenty of wood and kindling around me, and my canister of matches was still in my bag. Food was more problematic. I didn’t have but so many protein bars in my bag.

I ducked outside the teepee, closing the canopy behind me to deter animals. The snow still fell, already obscuring the worst edges of the wreck. It wouldn’t be easy to find my way back to the teepee once the snow obliterated all signs of my passage to and from the wreck. I found a bright red fleece pullover in my pack and tied it to as high a branch as I could reach in a tree next to the teepee. I also marked the location in my GPS system, and zipped the small device securely in the inside pocket of my coat.

I set about gathering firewood, and was glad to find a downed tree with the bark peeling. I didn’t find any grubs –good if unconventional protein – but I stashed a lot of the brittle inner bark in my coat pocket for kindling, as well as some powdery inner wood from the underside of the trunk that was still dry. As I collected, I tried to spot any animal trails in and among the trees. If I was going to try for a rabbit, the best place to catch them was on their usual byways.

I hauled several armloads of wood into the teepee. Logan hadn’t moved from where I’d laid him after his arduous journey from the plane wreck, but his heartbeat seemed stronger and more even, and his color wasn’t so pale. I checked that the emergency blanket was still tucked securely around him. Then I started on my rabbit snares.

A rabbit snare is a simple thing. It’s just a loop of cord attached to a trigger. In this case, the trigger was a tree fork cut down small. I tied one end with parachute string to a bent-over sapling. The other end held a loop of more parachute string a few inches above what I hoped was a rabbit trail. The hook itself was wedged against a tree root. In theory, the rabbit would run along the trail, and when its head went in the loop, it pulled the trigger from its tree root and the sapling sprung upright, taking the snared rabbit with it. Rabbits weren’t the canniest of creatures, thank goodness, because my three snares looked blindingly obvious. I hoped this place was so remote that they’d never seen one before.

The snares set, I went back to the teepee to get a fire going. I moved all the gear against the back and sides of the teepee, which should further insulate against the cold. Then I cleared stray pine needles away from where I wanted the fire. I wouldn’t need a very large one to warm the tent – I’d been taught that even a single candle could provide adequate warmth – but I wanted something a little bigger so I could melt snow for water and cook whatever I was able to catch. I dug a shallow pit and lined it with rocks – plentiful on the hillside. I had enough rocks within easy reach to build a good-sized fire bank around the pit as well. That would keep the fire safely contained. I’d put too much effort into building the teepee to risk burning it down. I piled lots of kindling and wood in the back of the teepee to last me the night, and I arranged some in the fire pit, ready to light.

I didn’t have anything to hold water. Logan had teased me about carrying my pots out of the Yubari City house, and now I wished I had. What could I use? Maybe there was something still left at the wreck.

Once more I trekked uphill, but warily. As I expected, the predators had gathered in force. A pair of foxes lurked near the fuselage, and a trio of vultures had fallen silently through the snow to peck at the blood. I had Logan’s katana in hand to scare them off, and they moved off unwillingly, hissing at me in displeasure. Something told me to bang on the fuselage, and in short order a third fox came scampering out. I climbed inside quickly, wondering if my brazier had survived the crash. I found it in a corner intact, but it took so long to pry it out of the wreckage that I was worried about more animals climbing into the jet after me. I finally wrestled it into my arms. Now I had something to cook on, but it couldn’t hold liquids. All I found was a couple of curved pieces of metal, so I took them along with me.

The wolf I’d dreaded faced me when I came out of the wreck. It was more surprised than I, but I was more afraid. I projected a sharp spike of fear to send it running. But it was warning enough that I couldn’t linger.

I hurried back to the teepee, detouring only long enough to check my snares. Nothing yet. I approached the teepee warily in case animals had come calling here, too, but things were quiet. I took the last bit of daylight to rig more of the parachute cord above the fire pit to hold one of the curved bits of metal. I tilted it slightly off to one side, and dug a new pit, a little deeper and narrower than the fire pit, underneath it. Into my handy bag of stuff I went, and came up with the poncho. I knotted the hood off tightly, then lined the new pit with the plastic. I would put snow on the metal piece suspended over the fire, which would melt and drip into the pit.

I put snow on the metal gingerly because I wasn’t sure that I’d balanced it to drip in the right place. Sure enough, I had adjustments to make, but soon I was able to bring out matches and light the kindling.

To my utter gratification, the fire went up with just one match. I quickly nurtured the little sparks in the shredded bark with a few crumbs of powdery rotten wood, then twigs and sticks. In just a few minutes, I had a small, steady blaze going.

I dashed out to check my snares one more time before dark. Two hadn’t been touched, but I was startled to find that the third had been sprung and a rabbit swung gently in the snow at eye level. I freed it, reset the snare, and tried not to feel guilty about killing the little creature. I had dealt so much death that even ending this small life out of necessity was painful. I sent a prayer of thanks out into the snow, and carried the rabbit away from the trail. My wakizashi made quick work of gutting it. The sun was falling as I skinned it and took it back to the teepee.

The fire had burned down, so I freshened it with small pieces of wood. I checked the top of the teepee. The smoke flaps drew well, protecting the inside of the teepee from the weather, but still allowing smoke to escape. The inside of the teepee was already noticeably warmer. It wasn’t balmy, but at least warm enough to melt the snow suspended above the fire. The air outside had gotten significantly colder as the sun had fallen, so I was glad to stay inside. Before long, I had to replenish the snow to melt, and I had a good long drink. Once the fire burned down enough for good coals, I set up the brazier and laid on the first piece of rabbit to cook. I don’t know whether it smelled so good because I like roasted rabbit or because it seemed such a gift on a hard day.

Before long, the rabbit was ready to turn over. I squatted by the fire, savoring the heat. I used a couple of green sticks to nudge the meat over –

Logan stirred. When I turned towards him, his eyes glittered in the flickering light.

“Fox?” he rasped.

He thought I was his wife from so long ago. I found the one unbroken cup from my tea set and scooped it full of water. I hurried to his side.

“Rest, Logan. You’ve been badly hurt. Can you drink some water?”

He muttered something in a language I didn’t understand, maybe Blackfoot if he thought I was Silver Fox. When I held the cup to his lips, he sucked the water down greedily. I got a good three cups in him before he tried to focus on my face. His hand ventured out to touch my hair and he spoke again in the same language.

“English, Logan,” I coaxed. “Tell me in English.”

“Hair. You cut your hair. Why’d you cut your hair?” His eyes looked feverish, and his skin felt hot.

“It’ll grow, Logan,” I replied, and projected calm and peace towards him. He relaxed, content with my answer. I bent for more water. “Drink, Logan. It’ll help you heal.”

He drank all that I had melted, and then fell back into sleep, if that was what it was. I wrapped the shirt around his head again, retucked the foil blanket around him, and went out for more snow. This time, I got enough to pile it to one side of the teepee door so it’d stay cool enough not to melt, and I wouldn’t have to go outside for more before morning.

The rabbit wasn’t quite done yet, so I went outside to relieve myself. It was too dark to see the snow in my makeshift privy, but the resulting liquid didn’t smell strong, so I hoped I’d done a good job of staying hydrated. It was now well below freezing now despite the lack of wind, and the snow was falling harder. I gladly went back to my relatively warm shelter and took my first bite of rabbit.

Oh, God. It was ambrosia. I wasn’t ashamed of eating the whole thing down to the bones, washed down with snowmelt. I sent another prayer of thanks for the gift as I threw the bones away from the teepee. Back inside, I used some of the snowmelt to wash. The water was still cold enough to make me gasp, but one of the things that I’d learned over the years about survival camping was that staying clean was important. So I washed the important parts with freezing water, dried off with a tee shirt, and then put on clean underwear, silk leggings, wool socks, and thermal shirt topped with my sweater. I arranged my last two quilted kimonos over Logan. The last thing I did was to drape my discards over the clothesline and arrange my boots near enough to the fire to keep them from freezing. I crawled under the foil blanket and the kimonos beside Logan, then spread my down coat over both of us. I fell asleep in less than a heartbeat.


	5. Chapter 5

I remember waking three times in the night. Twice, an animal outside the teepee woke me as it snuffled around the parachute silk. I sent out sharp, quick spikes of fear, and the animals ran off. Each time, I put another few sticks of wood on the fire and then snuggled back next to Logan.

An animal woke me the third time, too, but it was a strange one. I sent a spike of fear at it, but it didn’t flee; it only paused in its approach. I flicked out a stronger, more insistent projection that sent it scrambling away. I added more wood to the fire, wondering what it had been, but exhaustion quickly persuaded me back to sleep.

When I woke the next time, I was able to see something other than pitch. People who live in cities have a hard time imagining just how dark real dark is. It consumes everything, like I imagine blindness to be. But the darkness had lifted a little, so morning must’ve come.

I put on my pants, coat, hat, and mittens to go outside. I found a pristine forest sugared in snow worthy to be pictured on a holiday card. It was truly beautiful – and deadly. The sky was still overcast and the air was so frigid that I wasted no time heading to the privy. I also dashed about to check my snares, and I’d gotten another rabbit only minutes ago, as it still struggled against the loop. I dispatched it quickly and forced numb fingers to gut it quickly in the cold –

Have you ever gotten the feeling that someone is watching you? I never had until I let my mutant talents develop. I’d decided that the difference was that my talents sensed the emotions of whoever watched, and that was what revealed them to me rather than any extra sense of being watched. But now I wasn’t so sure. I hadn’t sensed any emotional threads, just a presence. I whirled quickly, half wondering if Logan had roused. But he was not what I found. In fact, nothing was what I found. Was the slight blur at the edges of my peripheral vision imagination, or something else? I looked around carefully, shivering in the cold, but saw nothing. I finished gutting the rabbit, packed it with snow to soak up the blood, and emptied it out. I scrubbed my hands clean in the snow and ran back to the teepee.

I’d let things run too long outside. By the time I managed to stoke the fire, I shivered almost more than I could control. I warmed myself thoroughly before I went outside again for more snow to melt, and I didn’t take long at that. I stayed close by the fire as I put on the rabbit to cook. The aches in my bones told me that I wasn’t going to exert myself today as I had yesterday.

I spent the morning quietly, doing little but gathering snow to melt and wood to burn. Maybe the new-fallen snow had damped the smell of blood, because I didn’t have many animal visitors. I didn’t get any more rabbits, either, so I rationed the one I had. I whittled twigs into chopsticks so I could get meat off the brazier with less fumbling. I wished again for a cooking pot. The rabbit would go farther stewed than roasted, but I reminded myself to be grateful for the two I’d gotten. I kept careful watch on the fire, as I let it burn a little larger than I needed just to melt snow. I hoped the heat would help Logan heal. He stirred occasionally, rousing twice more for water. He didn’t seem to recognize me, and I didn’t press. I would have cherished a word from him, but my parents had drilled me long ago to be self-sufficient and to marshal my resources as best I could. Worry would only burn up calories and water that I needed.

I must’ve dozed, because I came suddenly aware with a jerk. There was a definite presence outside. I slipped my coat from Logan, put it on with my hat and mittens, and took up Logan’s katana and my wakizashi before ducking out of the tent. I let my talents rise to their fullest, searching for any scrap of emotion, intent, sensation from future or past.

Nothing. Not a scrap of anything, not even the presence I’d felt only seconds ago.

I let my talents open as far as they’d go. I rarely did this in populated areas because the influx of sensations could be overwhelming. But out here, with only Logan nearby, what came to me was bearable. I sensed Logan’s essence behind me, dormant but recovering slowly. It had a much more feral cast to it than usual. I put that down to his body shutting down as much as possible so that all resources went to repairing himself. I set those sensations aside and breathed into what remained…

Foxes… squirrels… a pair of hawks high above me….

There. Something else. Not human… not inhuman, either.

What on earth was out there? Its emotions hovered on the edge of perception, teasing between fear and hatred, desperation and grief, the emotions tumbling over themselves like clothes in a spin dryer.

I was about to flick fear at it. But it was terribly scared already. So I sent out calm.

I got surprise back. Nothing human, like a deer confronted with a car on a road.

I sent it again, and got more surprise back. Then it faded out of perception.

I shivered, and not just from the cold.

While the whatever-it-was was gone, I ran to the privy, checked the snares, and found the third one sprung, but not holding a rabbit. I had one very angry red fox by the leg, and it twisted and snapped trying to free itself. I hurried to cut the animal down, but the loop of parachute cord was still around its foot and the cut end snagged on a branch. The fox cowered there, too frightened to do anything but snarl.

Foxes are fierce fighters. I didn’t want it to die from starvation, and I didn’t want to kill it. I projected calm and sleepiness at it. At first, it didn’t work, but I pushed harder, and after a few moments, it lay down quietly, though never taking its eyes from mine. I hummed a soft little tune, edged closer to its trapped foot, then in one quick movement eased the noose off. I flicked a little wakeup jolt, and the fox retreated immediately.

Before I got too cold, I gathered up the pieces of my snare, knotted the cut ends of the string together, and reset it a little ways away.

My return to the teepee took me past the wreck. I ought to bury what was left of the pilot, if I could stomach it. Before I could think about how brutal a job that would be, I circled around to the opening in the fuselage – and quickly backed off. A couple of wolves and a cloud of vultures made any thoughts of paying reverence short lived. So I backtracked to pass the wreck on the far side.

A weasel furtively worried something almost underneath the fuselage on the intact. Was it part of the body of the pilot? Odd – how had it gotten outside and under the plane –

The weasel took off when it saw me. I eased closer, hoping the animals on the other side of the wreck wouldn’t notice me. But the remains that had drawn the fox weren’t those of the pilot. In fact, at first I didn’t think they were human, because they were covered in grey fur, maybe the leg of a wolf. But wolves, even Canadian timber wolves, weren’t the size of ponies, and they didn’t have opposable thumbs –

I can’t tell you how badly I jolted. Then I scanned again. Still nothing. Logan still slept undisturbed.

Maybe it was stupid, but I quietly dug what remained of the creature out from under the plane, little more than the arm and part of the torso. I stealthily took it some distance uphill from the wreck, out of sight of the animals, where I quickly scraped a place free from snow. I laid the remains down and covered them with rocks. Before I put the last rocks on the cairn I put a pinecone by the arm, the closest thing I had to a flower offering. Then I closed the cairn and headed back towards the teepee.

There! The presence again. Up the slope from me –

I turned quickly, and maybe I caught another glimpse of movement in the corner of my eye.

Maybe I didn’t, too.

I hurried downhill, spooking when I heard something in the brush. But it was another gift, another rabbit in my snare. A hawk hung off it, fluttering madly to pull it free. I lunged at it with both blades and startled it into flying off. Before it could swoop down again, I freed the rabbit and ran, not bothering to reset the snare or gut the rabbit. More than the threat of the bird’s talons hastened my feet – that presence had unnerved me, and I couldn’t wait to duck inside the teepee, however tenuous its protection was.

I calmed as I stoked the fire, checked the water, and measured the firewood. All was well in hand, though I’d need more wood and snow shortly. I kept my talents engaged as I worked, sensing something just out of reach, wondering if it were menace or not. I raided my stash of parachute cord to rig a harness for the katana so I could carry it on my back when I was outside of the teepee.

Just before it got dark, I restocked wood and snow, visited the privy, and skinned and gutted the poor rabbit. I cooked and ate in silence, then crawled into the nest with Logan as I had last night. He was calmer, and seemed truly to sleep. I wondered if I’d be able to find sleep for myself, knowing that something unknown was outside. But it seemed that I’d no sooner recognized the worry than sleep took me. I didn’t wake until morning.

My third day on the mountain began quietly, without sign of the unknown presence. I reset the rabbit snare that I’d abandoned so quickly last night, and checked the other two to find another rabbit waiting for me. I didn’t have time to clean it before I felt a stir of emotions from the teepee. I hurried inside.

Logan stirred weakly, then groaned. I scooped up water and went to his side.

“Rest easy,” I murmured, and hummed the same tune I’d given the fox as I held the cup to Logan’s lips. He gulped down three cupfuls before he eased, but when his eyes sought mine, they were lucid.

“Rachel?”

“You’re awake,” I smiled in relief. “Don’t move around a lot yet. You were badly hurt in the plane crash and you’ve had a lot of healing to do. Just rest.”

He thought about that, then closed his eyes. “Starving.”

“I caught a couple of rabbits. Eat what’s left of the first one while I clean this one.”

He crawled out of the nest to crouch unsteadily by the fire. Too weak to talk, he pointed to the fresh one. When I handed it to him, he tore it apart and ate it raw, even cracking the bones and sucking out the marrow. I’d never seen anyone eat like he did, without a vestige of civilization. But I understood how desperate his body must be after repairing so much damage. One rabbit wouldn’t be nearly enough to quiet it. Indeed, when he wolfed down the last scraps, leaving only skin, offal, and a few broken bones, he skewered me with feral eyes.

I projected calm, refusing to let him frighten me. When the projection touched him, his emotions settled. He pulled off his socks and his shirts, gathered himself to his feet, and went out of the teepee. I followed him.

“Gotta eat,” he rasped. His head was up, already casting for the scent of prey.

“Wait.” I ducked back into the teepee to dig Logan’s boots out from under the pile of gear. They were mostly intact, though bloody, and I had cached them under our gear to minimize any smell that might’ve attracted animals. I hurried back outside.

“I saved these and your duffel, but your coat was destroyed in the crash.”

“Don’t need ‘em.”

He headed off into the forest, leaving his boots in my hand.

I shivered. The creature was still out there, and Logan had gone feral. I hoped they didn’t run into each other. I hoped the creature didn’t come after me while Logan was gone. And I hoped Logan found something to eat quickly. Whatever happened, my talents would protect me, without question. But that didn’t mean I’d like the doings any more than I’d liked Weapon X’s sims.


	6. Chapter 6

I trotted away from Rachel before hunger got the better of me. I’d felt her body heat, heard her heart beat, smelled her scent, and as depleted as I was, sensing her life force was torture. The rabbit held me long enough to understand where I was, but I needed more before my body stopped driving me with a whip.

My senses took over for the hunt. A stray memory flitted into conscious thought about a time where I’d hunted in a forest like this in the company of wolves. It’d been easier to take down a deer or a moose with a pack, and without one I’d have to rely on stealth and speed to surprise my prey. I couldn’t muster either until something else went down my throat, so I followed the faint smell of my own blood to the wrecked jet that had thrown me into this place. Sure enough, predators scrounged there – foxes, carrion birds, and smaller mammals. A vulture that was too greedy to back off went down my gullet with all speed and no elegance. I left the scattered feathers and remains next to the wreck for the weasels. If I didn’t find better prey, the vulture’s bones would draw another easy meal soon enough.

As little as the vulture was, it was enough to steady my legs and sharpen my senses. I cleaned my hands and face, then headed away from the wreck in silence, casting for a scent or a life force.

There isn’t much to say about the hunt. With the light snowfall to screen me and my hunger to sharpen my senses, I scouted for prey. When I found a mature doe, I took her down in record time – then devoured a lot of her hot and steaming. Liver and heart are rich and full of calories, and I was grateful for them. I cleaned out the entrails, removed the head, and hung the carcass to bleed from a tree fork while I cleaned myself and rested. Before competition came sniffing after the blood, I put the carcass on my back and headed back to Rachel.

In less than an hour, I was within sight of Rachel’s camp. Only then did it register how much she’d done alone – shelter, water, fire, food. She came out of the tepee as I passed the wreck of the jet, her eyes glowing brightly. She had rigged a rough harness out of parachute line over her coat to hold a katana, and she had a wakizashi in one hand. I was upwind, so I couldn’t tell by scent whether she was apprehensive or not, but her bearing was certainly wary. Still, she smiled as I approached.

“Are you going to eat the rest of that raw, or can I cook some of it?” she heralded.

“You ain’t goin’ all civilized on me, are you?” I mock growled as I slung the deer off my back.

Her bearing eased enough that she put her arms akimbo. “Does it look like I’ve gone civilized, Logan?”

“’Bout as civilized as it gets up here, darlin’. When’s the hot tub goin’ in?”

She smirked. “When you said your place in Canada needed work, I didn’t think that you meant I’d have to build accommodations myself.”

I grinned. “How long was I out?”

“About 48 hours.”

“Musta been pretty torn up.”

She winced, then told me how bad it’d been. I didn’t remember anything after the instant of crushing pain when the jet crashed until waking just an hour or two ago. I asked her about setting up the camp, and she showed me the teepee and the privy. Despite the dead deer, she led me around to her rabbit snares as she checked them. Smart woman – who knew how long we were going to be stuck here, so whatever food we got wouldn’t be wasted. She also showed me her snow-melting contraption and the stockpile of wood.

“You did damn’ good, darlin’,” I complimented her honestly. “More than damn’ good. Where’d you learn all this stuff?”

She scratched her ear under her fur hat. “Would you believe I was a Girl Scout for ten years?”

I arched an eyebrow. “And?”

“I went camping a lot with my father. He didn’t believe in cabins or cook stoves.”

“And?”

“Victor Creed. He scared me so badly that I started carrying survival gear with me everywhere, and I took two extensive survival training courses.”

“Thought so. Smart woman.”

“Smart enough to stay warm, Logan. It’s below freezing, and you don’t have anything on but jeans. As fast as you burn calories, you ought to put more clothes on.”

“I’ll butcher the deer first –“

Rachel looked away, distracted, and the light in her eyes intensified. Her bearing was wary again.

“What?” I growled.

“Keep your emotions steady. I’m going to let my talents go full throttle, and any sudden flare in your emotions would hurt.”

I nodded. Rachel’s body stilled and her eyes brightened to the point of pain. I let my own instincts go, tasting the air, searching for body heat, life force, sound…

“I’ve sensed something several times,” Rachel whispered so softly that even my ears barely picked up the sound. “Maybe I’ve caught a glimpse just at the edge of my vision. Not quite human, not quite animal. Above the wreck this time.”

I turned quietly, taking pains not to react to anything. I scanned the trees, sniffed.

Rachel’s eyes faded a little, and she stirred from her preternatural stillness.

“Anything?” I asked.

She shook her head. “It’s gone again. I’m not sure what I sense from it. A lot of intense emotions – rage, fear, confusion. Maybe they’re from a creature like the one I found under the jet.”

I flicked her a glance. “What kinda creature? Didn’t see anything odd up there.”

She nodded. “I buried what was left of it.”

“Show me. Maybe I can get a scent.”

A lot of emotions were behind her sigh as she led me uphill. “At first, I thought the remains were… the pilot, and burying him was the only thing I could do for him. And it’d keep any predators from nosing around that might track down here. But when I dug the remains out… they weren’t human, and they weren’t animal. Maybe an extreme mutation. Burial seemed the respectful thing to do.”

She led me to the rock cairn she’d piled over the remains. I removed enough to see the combination of wolflike pelt and humanlike hand, then replaced the stones thoughtfully.

“Did you get enough of a scent?” she asked.

I nodded. “More than enough. Not sure what it is, darlin’. But I hope it’s why your hackles were up when I got back here, and not me.”

She chuckled. “You were pretty intense when you went hunting.”

I would’ve started on my own flesh before I would’ve touched hers, but I couldn’t deny that I’d been driven when I’d awoken. Rachel had trusted me to control myself, and while her gamble had paid off this time, there might come a time when that wouldn’t be so.

“If you ever think that I might hurt you, you defend yourself,” I growled. “You know I don’t ever want to hurt you, but Roshi Timisu was right about my lack of control. Don’t depend on me to have the sanity to stop myself.”

Rachel didn’t look away in embarrassment, shame, or deference as she might’ve a couple of years ago. She met my eyes steadily.

“I don’t want to hurt you any more than you want to hurt me, Logan. But the same people trained both of us to kill, and you tell me I do it well. So trust that I’ll survive whatever is thrown at me.”

I nodded. “I’ll hold you to that, darlin’. Now we better get that deer butchered before we attract more than your friend.”

We backtracked to where I’d left the deer carcass near the wreck, and sure enough, predators were circling. I ran them off fast enough, and hauled the meat a ways away from either the wreck or the camp. Once we had a little distance between us and the moochers, Rachel laid her coat and mittens aside and set to peeling the hide away from the meat in one piece while I kept the predators back. In between running foxes and weasels and even a wolf off, I set up a smoke rack and a rough lean-to that would concentrate the heat and smoke around the meat. I let coals from the teepee fire start a drying fire while I disjointed and boned the pieces of the deer that Rachel freed from the hide. Rachel cleaned her hands and stood by the fire to put her coat and mittens back on.

“I guess we’re stuck here for a while,” she ventured, nodding at the rack as she warmed.

“Might be,” I agreed. “Don’t guess anyone knows where we are, or you woulda told me.”

She nodded. “My cell phone didn’t survive the parachute jump. I landed pretty hard. My GPS was okay, so I know where we are, even if nobody else does. I think we’re not all that far from the coast of British Columbia.”

“Matches what I got from the jet before I went down. What about your internal GPS? That still on line?”

She looked down guiltily and shook her head. “Weapon X disabled it, and I went to Japan before I thought to fix it. I’m sure someone knows we’re down because the jet disappeared, but I don’t think we’d be the easiest to get out of here even if someone were to know exactly where we were.”

I stirred the coals. “Won’t be easy for us or rescuers to get through the snow. It’s too cold at night for you to survive without food and shelter. So we’re gonna store up food before we move out. That and the teepee will mean we won’t have to spend much time huntin’ or buildin’ shelter each night, which means we stay warm and fed while we travel. And I’ll make us snowshoes to ease walkin’.”

“What can I do to help?”

I grinned. “You wanna rub deer brains into the hide to tan it?”

“Very funny,” she retorted, sticking her tongue out at me. “It’s too cold for that dainty chore.”

“True. We’ll use the hide raw to hold the meat once we dry it out some. You lay on with your wakizashi and cut the meat into strips for the rack. Make ‘em real thin so they dry fast.”

Rachel bent to her slicing without comment. Her eyes stayed lit, and occasionally she’d look up to scan around us, keeping tabs on whatever was out there. I didn’t prod her, trusting that she’d alert me if she needed to. When she had a pile of meat strips, I added a lot of green wood to generate smoke, and we laid the strips on the rack to dry. Then I split the bigger bones into pieces and put them in the coals of the teepee fire to roast for their marrow. Hauling the leftovers away gave the eager circle of scavengers something to distract them from our stash.

By noon, things were well in hand, so I foraged for greens under the snow to supplement our meat. I also added a few more ribs to the teepee, more gilding the lily than adding anything that Rachel had overlooked. I cured the lack of cooking vessels, too – a piece of the deer hide went up on a low tripod at the side of the smoke fire, and I showed Rachel how to boil water in it with rocks hot from the fire. She started a stew in it without any prompting. Overall, we were in good shape as the sun fell behind the mountain.

“C’mon, darlin’,” I encouraged Rachel as she collected firewood for the night. “I got a few loads before you, so we got enough ‘til mornin’. Soup’s done.”

She joined me once she’d put the wood inside the teepee. She squatted down with a sigh and pulled off her mittens to warm her hands by the fire. After a few seconds, she pulled the surviving teacup and two pairs of whittled chopsticks from her coat.

“We’ll have to share the cup for the soup. But eating the meat will be almost civilized.”

“Go ahead,” I nodded at the soup as I used my chopsticks to help myself to meat from the brazier.

She scooped up some soup and held it cautiously to her lips. “It’s hotter than I expected,” she admitted, blowing on it. “Mmmmm. Nice to have something warm to drink. Tastes good.”

She handed me the cup. As I scooped up mine, she took off her fur hat and shook her head. “Better. This has been a life saver, but it was beginning to feel like it was glued to my head.”

I grinned and was about to tease her about turning into a fox when I smelled dried blood. She caught me sniffing, trying to locate the source, and her eyes lit.

“What?” she said warily. “Is our friend back?”

“I smell blood. Yours. You said you landed hard after the parachute jump. Did you hurt yourself then, or when you made camp?”

She considered. “I got dragged through a lot of debris on the river bed, but I didn’t think I got hit that hard. I twisted my left ankle, but it felt better after a while, and there wasn’t any blood. It’s not that time of the month, either.”

“Yup – monthly thing smells different. I smelled this when you took off your hat. Lemme see.”

I touched her hair gingerly, not wanting to aggravate any wound under my hand. I quickly found a dried, sticky patch on the back of her head, but there was no wound.

“Is this sore?” I asked, touching her head lightly.

“A little. Like a bump, not a cut.”

Disquiet stirred in my thoughts. In two months, Rachel had healed Weapon X’s trauma without a scar, and she hadn’t visited a plastic surgeon. Even the attempts to tattoo a number on her arm had disappeared. Four days ago, she’d badly sprained her wrist, yet she moved now as if she’d never been injured. Two days ago, she’d hurt an ankle during her parachute landing, but it hadn’t bothered her for long. I pointed at her ankle and loosened her boot long enough to feel the bone. Maybe it was a hair thicker than I remembered. I relaced her boot, then turned up her hand where her katana had sliced it. Nothing. I touched the back of her head again. What if she’d whacked it at the same time she’d broken her ankle…

All those days when Weapon X had held Rachel, all those days when she’d been too drugged to remember everything they’d done to her…

There was the transfusion of my blood I’d never told her about, back in San Francisco when her parents’ assassins had stabbed her. I didn’t think mutant powers transferred with transfusions, but Rachel’s talents had been adapting to circumstances ever since I’d met her…

I stifled my emotions so Rachel didn’t extrapolate the drift of my thoughts. But Rachel didn’t need my emotions to do that.

“Is there a wound there?” She touched her head, feeling for the bump.

“No.”

She found the spot, probed it carefully, then fingered the sticky spot in her hair. The eyes she turned on me weren’t confused.

“The blood in my hair is mine?”

“Yup.”

She touched my hand. “Your claws are cleaner than my wakizashi.”

“What do you have in mind, darlin’?”

She pulled up her sweater sleeve. “An experiment. Just a small cut. Let’s see how long it takes to heal.”

I slid out the tip of a single claw and nicked the underside of her forearm. It was shallow and a couple of centimeters long, little more than a scratch. We sat there in the firelight as the blood welled up. When it threatened to drip down her arm, I leaned close to lick it clean. It was enough to give me a good taste. If Rachel’s body had somehow been induced to heal, it wasn’t something I could detect in her blood. Nor did her body immediately close the wound, as mine would have. Rachel pulled down her sleeve as if she didn’t want to know. She took up a strip of deer meat from the brazier with her chopsticks and blew on it.

“Do we have to watch the meat tonight to keep the animals away?”

I shook my head. “It’s too cold for the meat to spoil. I’m more dryin’ the stuff out than fully smokin’ it. That’ll reduce the weight we have to haul once we move out. Hardest thing will be bending the raw deerskin around it.”

“The sun’s almost down. Let’s get everything in before the light’s gone.”

Rachel’s sense of urgency had nothing to do with the fading light. She wanted to keep busy so she didn’t think about the scratch on her arm. Thought of the whatever-it-was wasn’t out of her mind, either. I pulled her to her feet and asked her to flatten out the deerskin. I kicked the brazier away from the fire to cool in the snow, then we set to piling the semi-smoked meat on the deerskin. As I expected, the temperature dropped fast once the sun went down, and the frozen skin was hard to maneuver even with the warm meat piled on it. By the time the light was completely gone, the smoke fire was out, the meat was hanging in a bundle from a nearby tree, and we were in front of the teepee fire with the soup pot and brazier warming and hot roasted marrow to savor. Good thing. The wind had started to rise and it smelled like more snow was on the way.

We shared the marrow before Rachel pulled up her sweater sleeve. As I expected, there was no sign of the slice I’d made. Her heartbeat jumped and her scent wavered between so many emotions that I couldn’t tell which one dominated. Her eyes were unreadable for a long minute, then her lips quirked.

“Maybe you’ll stop brooding about outliving me,” she murmured.

Rachel having a healing factor didn’t change a lot of things, but I didn’t say so. At most, she’d stacked the already good odds in favor of her getting out of these mountains alive.

“Maybe I will,” I said, and let things go at that.


	7. Chapter 7

Logan surely heard how my heart sped up when we discovered that the cut on my arm had healed. I didn’t know what he thought of it, because I had my emotions to sort through, starting with anger because once again Weapon X had mucked with me, and elation because it was something that actually benefited me. As to what it meant for Logan and me… that was complicated even before I sensed Logan’s ambivalence, and I didn’t try to sort it out now. I was marooned on the side of a frozen, remote mountain, it was be a long, hard trek to safety, and something strange and unknown skulked outside just out of range of my understanding. Those things were more than enough to consider now.

Once night fell, Logan stirred from the fire. He pulled on his boots and an extra sweater.

“I hope you’re just going out to the privy,” I said.

“Wanna take a look see,” he replied. “That thing still out there?”

“It is. It’s been close off and on all day. I haven’t gotten much, just the same threads of emotion. All extreme. Maybe there’s not much sentience to govern or moderate them.”

“Can you tell where it is now? Uphill, downhill, right, left?”

I closed my eyes and let my talents open fully again. “Uphill again. Maybe just above the wreck. But it’s a nebulous sense.”

“Good enough. I don’t have to tell you to stay in here while I’m gone, do I?”

“It depends on why you want to ask,” I bantered, trying to lighten the mood.

“Ain’t worried about your skills, kid,” Logan growled. He wasn’t in the mood to joke, which meant that it was no whim that drew him outside. “Wind’s risin’, and it’s too damn’ cold out there for you.”

“Yes, it is.” I held my hands out to the fire again. “So here I intend to stay. Watch your back.”

“Keep your blades to hand in case.”

He ducked silently out of the teepee.

I stayed by the fire, shut my eyes, and strained my talents to their fullest. It was a surreal sensation, hunkered down on my heels, the only physical sensation little more than the warmth and the quiet sound of the flames. But mentally, my brain filled with the whispered sensations of a fox, a pair of wolves, and an owl, grounded by the dark undercurrent of Logan’s emotions. He never went out of my half-kilometer range – was that good or bad? It was fascinating to feel Logan’s animal senses feed his emotions, to feel him become the consummate predator. I forgot about the teepee and the fire as my talents fed me as his did him.

It wasn’t long before I felt Logan return. I roused from my concentration and stoked the fire from its glowing embers into a brighter flame.

“Anything?” I asked softly when Logan ducked back into the teepee.

“I got close enough to smell it, feel its life force,” he replied as he shook the snow out of his hair. “Snow’s fallin’ again and there’s a blow comin’, so I didn’t poke at it for long. Wary as anything. Runs scared. But it’s bigger than me and it can run on either two or four feet.”

“When it realized you were tracking it, I got a spike of fear, then nothing. I wondered if it’d run off.”

Logan stooped next to me and held out his hands. “That’s about the way of it. Let’s get some sleep while we can.”

We both did our minimal washing before we settled down. It was too cold to wash the blood out of my hair, so I just combed the spot gingerly to unmat it, then lay down next to Logan under the kimonos and foil blanket. I was glad of his warmth, because the temperature dropped lower than it had last night, surely because of the wind. The double thickness of parachute canopy undulated around us, and the wind outside rose. We nested closely within the small circle of heat.

It was funny – not a year ago, I would have quailed at the precariousness of my predicament. Not now. Weapon X wasn’t after me, I wasn’t in prison, and Logan lay next to me. Things had been a lot worse.


	8. Chapter 8

I’m not sure what woke me in the night. Rachel slept peacefully beside me, the fire was low and quiet, and the wind, while strong, wasn’t unsettled enough to concern me. Maybe the cold did it, or my worry that it was too cold for Rachel. I eased away from her to put more wood on the fire.

Then I felt that odd life force, smelled it on the wind.

Rachel hadn’t stirred. I eased the kimonos over her, put on my boots, and ducked outside.

For long minutes, I stood by the teepee door while my eyes adjusted to the darkness. Snow eddied around me, blown erratically on the stiff wind. It blew from the north, and was surely fiercer on the other side of the mountain. I caught the scent again; whatever it was, it was above me. I ventured silently away from the teepee, angling downhill first before I turned uphill. Five minutes later, I was abreast of the wreck.

A quick flash of life force and scent from uphill. I followed.

A quick scatter of steps, racing downhill faster than any human. I followed –

My brain exploded with shock, disorientation, and fear. Rachel.

I pounded down the hill, ducked into the teepee.

Rachel was gone, and the nest was in wild disarray. She’d fought.

Urgency in my brain. Rachel. She was still fighting.

In this weather, without her hat or coat or boots, Rachel had twenty minutes before the cold got her. I ran out into the dark.

Two minutes gone.

I heard her struggles and the snarling of whatever had grabbed her. She smacked it hard enough that it yelped. She sent me a flash of anger, telling me which way she’d been taken.

“Rachel!” I howled. “Rachel!”

“Logan!” she howled back.

Five minutes.

More grunts and shouts, more blows from both Rachel and the creature. She pounded it with her projections as well as her fists and feet.

Seven minutes.

The cold was slowing her, stealing her strength. No healing factor would protect her against the freezing temperature.

Nine minutes.

They were just ahead of me. I made as much noise as possible, trying to scare the thing off. But it snatched Rachel up and ran faster than I thought possible in so much snow and tree cover.

Thirteen minutes.

She shouted, bit, and kicked as I raced to catch up. I dove for its ankles, tripping it into the snow, pitching Rachel over its head to land hard. Snarling, I scrabbled over its body, but it held me off with the strength of a bear. As I fell away, it snatched Rachel up and ran again.

Fifteen minutes.

The next time I caught it, once Rachel had fallen free, I raked claws across its ribs before it could twist away, forcing an eerie howl from it that raised every hackle. It lunged with the gaping jaws of a wolf and clamped down on my arm so I couldn’t bring my claws to bear on it, but my fist did just as well. It fell at my feet, stunned but still snarling. It skittered over to Rachel’s body sprawled in the snow, but I dove after it with a snarl no less animal-like than its own. Before it brought teeth to bear on her body, I kicked it hard enough to pitch it down the mountain. I moved in with my claws and let the leash on my beast slip –

Seventeen minutes.

“Logan. Don’t kill him. Don’t.”

Rachel. She was almost past speech in the cold, close to slipping into unconsciousness. She tried to right herself in the snow and couldn’t. The thing took advantage of my distraction to launch itself at me again. It sank teeth deeply into my thigh, shaking and tearing, goading my beast into exploding. I wanted to kill this thing past hurting her again.

Eighteen minutes.

“Don’t kill him. Logan –”

She couldn’t coordinate her body because it was too cold. She slipped in the snow and didn’t move.

Back in Sapporo, Rachel had held her hand against Roshi Timisu. She was asking me to do the same against whatever this thing was.

I didn’t want to, I didn’t want to – I tasted how badly I wanted to kill this thing for threatening one of the few good things that had been granted to me, the only one I hadn’t lost, and I’d do what it took to keep Rachel if it meant killing a city’s worth of people –

One last projection, barely coherent, so small that  I could’ve flicked it away like a fly, the faintest sense of calm, of control, of mercy…

Twenty minutes.

God damn her. She’d been out in this cold and wind for twenty minutes. She was going to kill herself doing this.

I took the thing by the neck and punched it into stillness with no calm, no control, no mercy. I left it in the snow and got Rachel over my shoulder… then I grabbed the thing by the scruff of the neck and ran back to the teepee.

Rachel’s skin was blue and her body was stiff when I burst into the teepee. I threw the thing to the other side of the fire, away from the nest, kicking it hard to make sure it stayed out. I put Rachel on the nest and stoked the fire into as hot a blaze as I dared. Hot rocks went into the deerskin pot with snow. I didn’t like doing it, but I delayed seeing to her long enough to raid the stash of parachute cord, and I lashed the thing’s back and fore legs together. Another tight loop went around its muzzle for good measure.

Then I turned to Rachel. I stripped her clothes and rubbed her cold body briskly. When the rocks from the fire were hot, I wrapped them in dry clothes from the clothesline and put them between Rachel’s thighs and in each armpit to warm arterial blood. I stripped my own clothes off and piled us in the nest with the kimonos, the foil blanket, and every piece of dry clothing on top of us, hugging her chest to mine. Her hands and feet were icy, waxy – close to frostbitten if not that. I put her hands in my armpits. She was too cold to shiver.

In a few minutes she started to warm. I reached out to fill the teacup with hot water from the deerskin. “Come on, darlin’. Take a drink.”

Most of my first effort ran down Rachel’s chin. But she roused enough to sip the rest of the cupful.

When she’d drunk that, her eyes opened, and she smiled. I nuzzled her in mute thanks.


	9. Chapter 9

I woke slowly. My limbs felt so heavy, as if I were swimming through molasses. I was warm enough that I didn’t want to move. But something in my head kept prodding me, prodding me, something frightened and terribly angry. So I roused despite every wish not to.

It was light enough in the teepee to see, so it was morning. I was very tired, and when I stirred, an arm around me tightened reflexively. Logan.

I remembered being out in the snow. The wolf boy had wrestled me out of the teepee and dragged me through the snow. As cold as the wind and snow swirling around me had been, his rage and despair had been as blistering as the desert sun, overwhelming enough to blind me. I’d fought him, but he’d had no sentience or empathy to lessen his blows. I’d projected fear at him over and over again, then urgency towards Logan to draw him after us before the cold consumed me. Even Logan’s strength and fury had been hard pressed to stop the berserker who’d held me. The wolf boy had had no thought of escape, no hope of survival. He’d done what he’d done as the ultimate deed of hatred, despair, self-annihilation.

Even through that tumult, I’d felt his terrible grief. That’s why I’d begged Logan not to kill him.

Unbelievably, Logan had held his claws, though his fists and kicks had done their worst before the snow had seemed to sweep over me. My next thought was here, warm beside Logan, with the wolf boy’s fear and grief rattling my brain.

I stirred again, and once more Logan’s arm tightened around me.

“I have to get up, Logan,” I whispered. “Some things can’t wait.”

“I stripped you to your skin last night,” he mumbled. “Gimme your hands and feet. Wanna make sure you ain’t dealin’ with frostbite.”

My hands and feet were fine, thanks to Logan’s fast efforts last night. He whuffed reluctantly. “Lemme get you some clothes before you dash to the privy.”

He eased out of the nest and pulled my pack within reach. As I pulled a silk pullover on, then a fleece one, then sweater and socks, he squatted naked by the fire to add more wood to it. He cast a look at the far side of the teepee, growling.

“Leave him alone,” I asked with a hand on Logan’s arm. I pulled on my hat, coat, and boots, and dashed outside to attend to the necessities, gasping in the cold. By the time I dashed back inside, I was more than happy to yank on underpants, silk leggings, socks, and pants.

“Why’re you so hot on savin’ that hunk of meat?” he growled, nodding at the miserable heap across the fire. “Damn’ thing nearly killed you.”

I picked up Logan’s discarded jeans and shirt and handed them to him. “I don’t know yet. But I’ll find out.”

“How?” Logan took the clothes from me in ill humor and pulled them on, the whole time glaring at the wolf boy.

I didn’t know, but it wouldn’t help to tell Logan that. Maybe it’d help if I told Logan that I knew why he was so mad. I touched his cheek, surprising him into looking at me.

“Thank you for last night.”

His eyes skewered mine, but I accepted his concern for what it was, and as I’d hoped, his gaze softened.

“You’re a piece of work, Rachel Osaka,” he grumbled, making me smile.

“So I’m told. Go take your turn at the privy.”

His hackles went up again, but I pushed him gently towards the teepee door. “Go. Nothing’s going to happen.”

“Better not,” he growled, and ducked out quickly.

While he was gone, I looked over at the tangle of grey furred limbs. He was awake for all he didn’t look it, and he knew I was in the teepee with him. I projected quiet, calm, ease, peace. I got little reaction, but he was aware of the sensation. I dropped hot rocks into the skin pot and stoked the fire as Logan returned with our cache of meat. He put it next to the fire to let the heat thaw the edge of the frozen deerskin enough that we could pull out enough for breakfast. I put some in the stew pot, more on the brazier, and a couple of pieces of marrowbone went in the coals.

“It’ll be hot in a minute, “ I said quietly.

Logan whuffed in acknowledgement, but his emotions still swirled with anger. I cooked some of the deer over the brazier quickly, and we ate in silence. Then I looked at our captive.

“What’re you gonna do?” Logan growled, subvocalizing.

“Nothing until you calm down,” I said quietly. “I’m pretty sure that there’s a good reason for what happened last night, but with your emotions clogging my talents, I can’t be sure. I’m okay now, and I’m going to stay okay, so please, Logan, pull in your claws and let me figure this out.”

He glared at me with all the anger of an old soldier, but he nodded and took a deep breath and forced his anger to calm. I smiled encouragingly.

“That helps a lot. Let me see what I can do.”

I kept projecting calm for a few more minutes as I added more meat to the skin pot and brazier. Truth to tell, both Logan and the wolf boy needed the calm. I sat myself down closer to the boy, found that tune I’d hummed to the fox, and thought about calm, peace, serenity.

In a few minutes, I tried to touch the wolf boy’s side. He flinched and struggled against his bonds even as Logan’s emotions protested, but I kept my hand there. I flicked a warning glance to Logan as I stroked the wolf boy’s side, his shoulder, his neck. His head reared up at my arm, trying to bite, but the cord around his jaws kept me safe.

“Shh,” I murmured. “Shh, boy. I’m not going to hurt you. Do you speak English?”

I couldn’t tell from the emotions surging through the boy whether he did or not, so I tried French with no further success.

“Logan, how do you say that things are okay in Blackfoot?”

He recited the phrase in an almost-neutral tone. Still no reaction. So I went back to English.

“Come on, boy. I won’t hurt you. I know you’re scared and you’re hungry. There’s nothing to fear.”

“Nothin’ unless you do somethin’ stupid again,” Logan muttered under his breath.

The boy heard that and flinched under my hand.

“That doesn’t help, Logan,” I said with exasperation, continuing to stroke the creature. “He understood you, so if you want to talk, don’t threaten him.”

“Him?” Logan growled. “So he’s male?”

I nodded. “What I don’t know is if he can talk. He knows what we’re saying, though. Don’t you?”

The creature under my hand didn’t say anything, but I got the distinct impression of him listening to me, and the first thread of sentience since I’d first picked up his emotions.

“My name is Rachel,” I murmured. “His name is Logan. Just rest. Shh.”

I shut my eyes and concentrated on calm, calm, calm as I stroked the boy’s flank, neck, and ears. When I opened my eyes, Logan was squatting by the fire watching me, but his emotions were calm. The wolf boy’s eyes were half open, and he was calm despite himself. I touched the cord around his muzzle, and loosened it a little. He flinched, but I hushed him again, and dripped a little soup from the teacup between his teeth, drop by drop so that the taste got on his tongue and he could swallow without choking. I got a strip of meat, blew on it, let him see me taste it, then I took off the cord around his jaws and touched the meat to his teeth. He snapped, but at the meat out of hunger, not at me.

“Easy, easy,” I murmured. “There’s more, so you don’t have to gulp it down. A bit at a time. Shh.”

He flinched, but chewed slowly as I fed him the bits of meat. A lot went down his throat in little pieces.

“Better?”

I actually got a nod, and a pair of pale blue eyes that stared at me warily.

“Thirsty?”

Another nod.

“Can we spare a piece of the deerskin?” I asked Logan. “He can’t manage the teacup, so if I dig a place in the dirt and put the deerskin in it, it’ll make a good bowl.”

Logan nodded, and moved to slice a piece of the skin holding the dried meat for me. He didn’t speak, but he made sure the wolf boy saw his claws and the ease with which he wielded them. Logan was never forgiving of anyone who threatened him, but he held his emotions in rough check, so I held my silence.

I left the wolf boy to find the shard of metal that I’d used to dig the water hole, and I brought it slowly into the wolf boy’s view. “It’s just something to dig with. It won’t hurt you.”

He didn’t move, so I started digging slowly a little ways from his snout. By the time I’d gotten down a few centimeters, Logan had the piece of deerskin. I lined the depression with it, then I used the teacup to pour in water.

“I’ll help you reach the water,” I told him, and put my arms around his shoulders to turn him a little upright and move him towards the water. But he was very heavy despite his leanness. To my surprise, Logan got on the other side of the boy and added his strength to mine. We got the boy within reach of the water, and he drank eagerly until the deerskin was merely damp. I added more, and he drank that down just as eagerly.

“I’ll melt more for you, but it’ll take a few minutes. Do you want more meat?”

He shook his head. It was weird, seeing something that looked so wolfish answer me with human intelligence. For there was sentience inside, for all that it was confused, grief-stricken, and frightened.

“Okay. If you do, tell me, and I’ll get you more. Can you talk?”

He shook his head again and made a guttural sound, maybe to show me that he didn’t have human vocal cords.

“Can you write?”

He nodded.

“Okay. But before I take off the cords, you need to know that Logan has a lot of the same talents you have, even though he doesn’t look like you. He’s very protective of me, and if you try to hurt me, he’ll react the same way you do. Do you understand?”

I couldn’t read his expression, but I’d have to have none of my empathic talents not to feel his surge of grief and anger. When I winced, Logan’s apprehension spiked. I held up my hand, forestalling him.

“I feel what you feel, and I know how angry and hurt you are. Maybe I can guess what happened. You weren’t up here alone, were you?”

His grief surged. Tension leaped into his body.

“When the plane crashed, it killed someone like you. The person you saw me bury.”

Rage overwhelmed the grief, and a snap of his powerful jaws drew Logan’s growl.

“You really miss the one who died. Maybe you’re alone now, and you didn’t think you could stand that loss. You saw me come to the wreck and take care of Logan when he was hurt, and you were angry because he didn’t die and leave me alone like you. So you came after me last night because you wanted the person you thought killed your friend to die alone, even if you died, too.”

If a wolf could cry, this was what it would sound like.

“I’m so sorry,” I murmured, and wrapped my arms around the boy, because despite what he looked like, a boy was all he was.


	10. Chapter 10

Rachel is a rare one, and not just because of her mutant talents. They give her an inside track on a person’s feelings that no human and damned few mutants have, sure. But what she does with that is what makes her a better person than most. I read emotions in scents, but it doesn’t make me any more forgiving than the next soldier. Rachel, on the other hand…

Within an hour, she had most of Eric’s story out, and Eric himself untied and literally sitting in her lap like a big puppy. I kept one eye on the ferocious teeth and massive jaws that belonged to that big puppy. He was more than half wild, and hadn’t had an easy time as a mutant. Still… even as suspicious as I was, I winced to see how desperately he soaked up simple physical contact with another person. That was a longing I understood.

Once Eric’s initial rush of emotion was over, she freed his limbs and wrapped arms around him while he howled, humming her soothing little drone until he was wrung out. From there, she doctored the worst of the marks I’d left on him last night with some antibiotic cream and aspirin she produced out of her gear bag. Along the way, she ferreted out that he knew American Sign Language, a good thing because we didn’t have anything for him to write with. Both Rachel and I knew ASL, so things moved along quickly after that.

The long and the short of it was that Eric was full Cree, maybe sixteen. He’d had a mother once. His father was dead. The mother’s boyfriend was friendly enough until Eric’s talents had manifested, and while his mother had accepted them, few others did because they were so extreme. The thick grey fur, canine claws, and long bushy tail were bad enough. His size and strength were worse – he stood over six feet tall on his back legs. The worst was his head with its tall, pointed ears, long snout full of formidable teeth, and the too-big cranium bulge that housed a human’s intelligence as well as an animal’s sensory superiority. Talk about Anubis come to life…

His mother had done her best to protect him, but when his younger brother Robbie manifested the same set of talents, the pair was hard to hide. When the boyfriend found out, he’d erupted. The mother had thrown the boyfriend out, but between his constant harassment and harping from the town, both boys had run off. They’d managed out here on their own for about a year, until our jet had come crashing down four days ago. It’d been so long since Eric had had to think like a person that he hadn’t. I understood that better than he realized.

I hate it when Rachel makes me rethink my surly outlook on something. I kept up my guard, but I stopped growling about it, because I couldn’t blame Eric for his despair. I hate it even more when Rachel tries to make a family out of whatever collection of souls she finds herself with, because humanity, mutant or not, isn’t what I like to be around most of the time. But Rachel was quiet, patient, and practical, so when she pointed out that we needed more fresh meat, I reluctantly set out hunting with the wolf boy in tow. Our own little wolf pack. Happy, happy.

I settled the alpha male issue once we were out of sight of the teepee.

“Eric,” I said, turning to face him as he followed me over the ridge. “Just so we’re clear…”

Eric sat back on his haunches and looked at me warily.

“Rachel’s a lot better person than I am. I know you’ve had it hard, and I’m sorry about Robbie. But I’m the boss. You lay one paw on my woman, you do something sneaky when my back’s turned, I won’t be nice. Got it?”

I backed up my words with a nasty dose of subvocalizing, and I showed him my teeth. They weren’t as formidable as his, but they weren’t human, either, and he already knew about the claws. He hunched down, and I got a good dose of chagrin in his scent when he nodded.

“Okay. Let’s find us a deer. Nothin’ bigger. Just the two of us to take it down.”

We got along fine after that. Sure, there was a little testing on Eric’s part, and why not? He looked better suited to be a wolf than I did, but I’d been at it longer, and I was better at finding and stalking prey than he was. Eric had the better build for swift pursuit, and better teeth to latch onto and hold prey, but my claws were better to quickly kill and butcher whatever we caught. I’m sure he figured that what I did to a deer, I could’ve done to him last night, so he stopped playing games. I’ll give him this, too – he didn’t leave me to haul the carcass back on my own while he raced ahead. I did do most of the hauling, but he kept pace with me, and even caught a brace of ptarmigans on the trip back. When I stopped at trees with an inner bark we could eat, or picked up a seed cone here and there, he watched curiously. When we returned, Rachel had dug more greens as I’d showed her, and she had the smoke fire burning down to coals. Dinner was prime – seared deer liver and heart, crisp ptarmigan, spruce tea, stewed deer and inner bark. Eric ate almost as much as I did, but even so, a lot of the meat went on the smoke fire. Things were positively chummy when we bedded down that night, though I think Rachel would’ve piled Eric in the nest with us if she’d had her way.

No way did I trust any stranger around Rachel, alpha male or not. Eric had to content himself with bedding down across the fire from us with one of Rachel’s quilted kimonos.

The next morning, Eric and I did a quick foray for more meat for the smoke fire, and a bigger collection of greens and bark. When we got back, Rachel trusted Eric with one of the wakizashis to help prepare the meat, which raised my hackles. I kept my mouth shut, because after a second of consideration, Eric took her trust as the compliment she meant it to be, and he willingly set to. Imperceptively at first, Rachel drew him into conversation as we worked. He didn’t say much at first, but Rachel kept an easy stream of words going. After a while, the pup got interested despite himself, and the flood of questions about mutants and a thousand other things started. I worked in silence for the most part, letting Rachel do her magic. She made Eric a pair of chopsticks and taught him to use them. She didn’t tease him for fumbling the first few times, and he was game to learn something new. Along the way, she got him to mull over the choice of a mutant name, and to no one’s surprise he settled on the name of the jackal-headed Egyptian god he’d first reminded me of. It wasn’t much consolation for a mutant with such extreme deviations from homo sapiens, but it was the first pleasure he’d shown since we’d met him. Once we got the deer cut up and over the fire, there was no stopping the boy’s hands from spilling out a thousand questions, all of which Rachel answered.

Of course, like any teenaged boy, he pushed the envelope, and started raining questions on me. I stuck to the basic story of being a soldier, and left the worst stuff out. Eric had already lived his own version of mutant hell, so there was no point in telling him mine.

By afternoon, Rachel privately broached the subject that I’d been mulling.

“How long do you think it’ll be before we can head out of the mountains?” she asked me quietly in Japanese when Eric was watching the smoke fire.

“Not long. Maybe tomorrow.”

She considered. “It’s going to be hard on him when we tell him that we aren’t going to stay up here.”

“Yup,” I murmured. “Keep your guard up. I don’t wanna hurt the pup, but I’m not stayin’ up here for all that we’re doin’ well.”

“There’s going to be a media circus when we get down,” she murmured. “Because of me.”

I hadn’t thought of that, but she was right. I kept forgetting that Rachel Osaka wasn’t just my lady. She was one of the world’s richest women, and though she didn’t seek the limelight, it often sought her.

“And?”

She took a marshalling breath and put a hand on my arm, so I wasn’t going to like what she was about to say. Still, she didn’t project anything to persuade me in any direction.

“I don’t want to drag you into that mess. Eric shouldn’t be anywhere near it, either. So maybe you could stay up here with him until the furor dies down, and I can find his mother without a pack of reporters on my tail.”

She was right – I didn’t like what she said. But she’d also gauged the situation well. The cold and wilderness were no hardship to me, and staying apart from her while the reporters swarmed protected both of us – her more than me. If Eric understood that he wasn’t going to be abandoned again, he’d stay calm, which protected Rachel, too. I whuffed reluctantly.

“You’re right about the media circus, and about keepin’ the two of us out of the middle of it. But the pup… you can’t solve all the world’s problems, darlin’.”

“I know that,” she admitted unhappily. “But I don’t want to just leave him up here if there’s something else I could do.”

“I know you don’t,” I conceded. “But I ain’t gonna stay up here for weeks. When you get to a phone free of reporters, call the great white geek to send his beasties over the ‘net. Maybe he can find the pup’s mom fast.”

She smiled at my friendly epithet for our albino friend, Daniel the cyber god. “That was going to be my second phone call. The first will be to tell my grandmother that we’re okay.”

“Good plan. Looks like I better get started on some snowshoes.”

“And I better break the news to Eric.”

“I’ll tag along for that, darlin’.”

She shot me a wounded look, but I didn’t apologize.

“He’s half wild, Rachel. He don’t know what he’s doin’ half the time, but he knows I’m alpha. So I’m gonna back up your good intentions, no discussion.”

She conceded with a nod, and then we headed for the smoke fire.

It wasn’t easy, because Rachel was right that Eric didn’t want to hear that we planned to leave. But in the midst of the angst, Rachel grabbed the fur on each side of Eric’s neck and shook him gently. My hackles went up because she cradled those massive jaws in her hands just centimeters from her face.

“Eric,” she said, focusing his eyes on her. “I am going to help you. You told me your mother’s name. After people get tired of hearing about me in a day or two, I’m going to find her and tell her where you are. Is it okay for me to tell her that?”

A long, long moment on the cusp of an emotional explosion, a moment where it was all I could do not to unsheathe my claws… at the last moment, Eric whimpered, but nodded.

“Okay,” Rachel rubbed his fur comfortingly. “I’m going to give you my most precious thing in the world while I’m gone. Logan. He’ll stay with you until I can find your mother.”

 _What about after?_ Eric signed.

Rachel shook her head. “You know I can’t promise anything, Eric. All I can do is my best to find your mother, and have my best friend stay with you until then. Treat him well, because he is the one thing in this world that I will come back for.”

She said it with such conviction that I memorized the moment. I didn’t get such a gift often, and I wanted my sieve of a brain to savor every detail.


	11. Chapter 11

Things were quiet the rest of the day. Logan kept an eye on the meat while he wove snowshoes for us both, and I packed the camp as compactly as possible. Eric stayed near me, too intimidated to try conversation with Logan. Today he ventured everywhere with his questioning, especially when he found out that I’d traveled a lot with my parents. I suspected that he’d loved books before his transformation, for while his knowledge was spotty, he was aware of a lot more of the world than was common in the backwater place where he’d been raised. That’s what eventually drew Logan into the conversation. Though he was silent about why he’d traveled to so many countries, he’d seen a lot of them, especially in Eastern Europe, and he had a keen eye for details that interested Eric.

We ate well and bedded down early. I slept quietly all night, warm between Logan and the fire.

Dawn the next morning was cloudy, but nevertheless we took the teepee down from the saplings and folded the parachute canopy into a tight bundle. Logan rolled the bundle around his duffel and slung it onto his back. I took one of my packs and Logan’s katana on my back. Eric fumbled with the straps on the other pack and got it across his shoulders and around his waist. I adjusted it for him so that he could travel on two or four feet, whichever was most convenient. The remaining swords, the brazier, and the smoked meat in its deerskin we rigged as a crude sled with a piece of the carpeting from the wreck as the bottom and parachute cord to pull with. We’d all take turns hauling that, two at a time.

It didn’t escape my attention that Logan had parceled out our gear so that Eric didn’t carry anything essential. Yesterday’s conversation notwithstanding, Logan trusted only to a point.

We set out not long after dawn, heading in as easterly a direction as the terrain allowed. I had camped many times in winter with my father as well as that Girl Scout troop I’d teased Logan about. Some of those ventures had been cold. Some had been in rough weather. And most had been primitive. But this adventure in the depth of British Columbia was all of them, and more. Going was slow, even on snowshoes, in part because of the awkward burdens we carried, and in part because the snow cover was so unpredictable. In some places, it was negligible; in others, seemingly more than a meter deep. I didn’t feel so embarrassed at how long it had taken me to drag Logan from the plane wreck to the teepee now, because watching him and Eric flounder told me I’d done no easy thing. But we kept at it, resting often, making sure we stayed as warm, dry, and hydrated as possible under such harsh conditions.

In early afternoon, the clouds lowered, and the wind, which had been restless all day, rose insistently. As the leader of our pack, Logan called an early halt before the weather got too rough. With an eye to the wind, he chose a site a little distance from a grove of sturdy pines that would act as a windbreak for the teepee. Things went quickly with three to set things up, and by the time the wind reached a howl, we had the teepee up, a fire going, a huge stockpile of firewood, and the water pit slowly filling. Logan must have expected a blow, because he didn’t cache our food in a tree but brought it inside the teepee. His experience proved right – before the hour was out, the sky was pitch, the wind whipped the snow horizontally over the land, and the temperature dropped precipitously. We arranged the sleeping nest with the woodpile at our backs, but even close to the fire and wearing layers of clothes, I shivered. Logan kept two shirts and a sweater on, and across the fire Eric was curled in as tight a knot as a six-foot wolf could make. I kept silent, knowing how Logan felt about Eric being too close to me, but eventually he conceded to the weather.

“Eric.” Logan beckoned with a hand. “Rachel’s gonna freeze unless we keep her warm. Come on.”

Eric was cold enough that he scrambled around the fire without hesitation. The three of us rearranged the bed of fir needles and small branches so that Eric could crowd beside me. We pulled the quilted kimonos and emergency blankets around us, and the chill eased a little. No one would be comfortable, but we’d live through the night.

The wind seemed to howl without variance, without pause, for hours. I didn’t sleep, but I must’ve fallen into a doze. I smelled both Logan’s familiar scent and Eric’s new, furry one, neither lupine nor canine, but not human, either. Irreverently, I was grateful that he didn’t have fleas. When I finally roused into wakefulness, Logan lay between me and the fire, and Eric lay curled around my back, the thick fur of his neck tickling my shoulder. The teepee was not quite pitch dark, but it was far from light, and the wind still howled.

There was something odd about the teepee. It seemed narrower. I peered blearily over Logan’s shoulder, trying to work it out. When I realized what it must be, I squeezed Logan’s shoulder.

He was awake in a moment. “What is it, darlin’?”

“Snow’s piling up around the teepee. If it gets too deep, it’ll block the door.”

“The pup awake?”

A whuffle behind me told us that he was.

“Good. We gotta clear snow from around the teepee to keep the door free, Eric. Rachel can’t go out there –”

“I can help,” I protested.

“Not out there,” Logan growled. “It’s too cold and the wind is too strong for you, and none of your talents change that. You’ll stay inside to hold our lifelines. It’s snowin’ so hard that we won’t be able to see two meters, so we’re both gonna wear a line to make sure we get back in here.”

“All right,” I conceded.

“Put your coat on and your boots. Hat and mittens. Ain’t gonna be much warmer inside the door than outside.”

I did as Logan told me, then I pulled my biggest fleece pullover out of my bag, the red one I’d hung as a flag outside our first camp.

“Eric, see if you can get this on. It’ll keep you a little warmer outside.”

If it hadn’t been so cold, it would’ve been funny trying to get the thing over Eric’s snout and the hood tied over his ears. It was a tight fit, and the sleeves came down only to his elbows, but he seemed grateful for it. Then he and Logan tied lengths of parachute cord around their waists, and gave me the ends.

“We’ll work on one side at a time so we stay together,” Logan told Eric as I put more wood on the fire. “Nothin’ elegant. Just shovel fast as hell then beat it back in here. Got it?”

Eric gave a thumbs up sign. I wound a cord around each hand and nodded my readiness. Logan went out first with Eric right behind. I crouched by the door to give them as much rope as I could without venturing outside.

Maybe they were out there only five minutes, but it seemed forever, and not just from worrying. The cold was severe. I dipped my face against my knees to shield my face, and made myself as tight a ball as possible. Every few seconds I checked the side of the teepee, gauging their progress from the motion of the parachute fabric. When that got too cold, I went back to my knot and let my talents tell me where they were. I scrambled out of the way when they barreled back inside.

Even Logan looked frozen, and Eric was shivering almost uncontrollably.

“Shake off the snow, both of you,” I said. “Then get by the fire.”

I helped both of them brush off the worst of the snow, then Eric shook carefully to remove the rest without sending snow all over the inside of the teepee. I filled his skin bowl with warm water, and handed more to Logan in the teacup. Then I pushed them both to the fire. After a few minutes, they went out again to clear the other side. When they came back this time, I didn’t have to urge either of them to the fire. I melted more snow and kept a steady stream of warm water going down their throats. Logan shook his outer shirt free of snow, and I rubbed Eric briskly with a dirty tee shirt to dry his fur. Eventually we got back into the nest, more or less dry, and slowly warming.

“Doesn’t sound like it’s getting any better out there,” I ventured.

Eric growled emphatic confirmation, and Logan shook his head.

I turned to Eric. “Have you ever seen it snow this hard up here before, Eric?”

He shook his head and hunkered a little closer to me. He brought his hands up to sign. _Sometimes this much snow, but not wind like this._

His apprehension was clear, and Logan surely smelled it. “I went through a couple of storms like this up in Alberta. We may be here a while. We’ll be okay as long as we’re patient, and we work together. We got plenty of food, and wood enough until mornin’. That’s gonna be our big worry – keepin’ the fire goin’ until the snow stops.”

Conversation lapsed for a long while, and I must’ve dozed again. When I roused, Eric was half in my lap, and Logan had put his back to the woodpile and pulled me against his chest. The fire had burned low, but the light inside the teepee was brighter. The wind still whistled from the north outside, and when I looked up at the smoke hole in the teepee, snow still drifted in.

Logan roused when I moved. “You all right, darlin’?”

“Just awake. We should put more wood on the fire.”

He reached behind himself and pulled a couple sticks of wood from the dwindling pile. I took them from him and leaned over Eric to add them to the flames. Eric roused with a low rumble.

“Morning,” I wished him, rubbing his head. “At least I think it is.”

It didn’t take long to realize that we all needed to attend to the most basic call of nature. Eric was embarrassed, and I realized that he’d always disappeared whenever he’d dealt with such things. No one had that luxury with the wind and snow howling outside. Logan matter-of-factly pointed downwind.

“Ain’t private, but it beats freezin’ to death,” he said. “Don’t take long or you’ll freeze to the ground.”

Whether he was joking or not, I didn’t care. I pulled on my coat, did what needed to be done, and afforded both Eric and Logan the same averted eyes that they did me.

“What about breakfast?” I asked when everyone was done.

Both Eric and Logan agreed, so I moved quickly to stoke the fire. Truth be told, I wanted the heat more than I wanted food, but both would be welcome. Logan moved to do it for me.

“Let me,” I asked him gently. “We ought to divide the chores up, and since I can’t help outside until the wind stops, I’ll take care of the fire and the cooking.”

“True enough,” Logan agreed. “You handle those. Eric, you’re gonna be in charge of the water. You keep the water pit, your bowl, and the soup pot full. I’ll wrangle the wood.”

Eric put his hands up to protest. _I can help you with the wood. You said yesterday that no one should be outside alone._

“You did say that,” I agreed. “It’s cold out there even for you, Logan. We can’t afford for any of us to get lost or hurt, because just two of us won’t be able to stay warm enough.”

When Eric pointed at me as if to say, “What she said,” I smothered a smile.

Logan shrugged his agreement. “Eric and I’ll handle the wood. We stay together, nobody goes wanderin’ off. I say when we go out.”

Eric and I nodded agreement.

“I’ll get breakfast,” I said, and moved to do just that. I was liberal with the meat because we had plenty, and even if all we did today was sit in the teepee, we needed lots of calories to stay warm. While I cooked, I thought about our ancient grandmothers squatting before similar fires, mustering the meals that kept their tribes strong. They had survived, and despite the cold that howled around us, we would, too.


	12. Chapter 12

While Rachel hunkered by the fire, tending the brazier and the soup pot, I kept one ear tuned to the vicious wind outside. I didn’t tell Rachel how dangerous a spot we were in, though Eric knew. He’d already said he’d never seen the weather this bad before, and I’d learned how to interpret his scents – he was scared. Not panicky, but the wind had his hackles up, and while Rachel tended the fire, he edged close to me for reassurance.

 _The storm is very bad_ , he signed to me furtively, when Rachel’s back was turned.

I cut my eyes to Rachel to make sure she was focused on the brazier before I nodded once.

_Too cold for her._

I nodded again.

_I’m sorry for what I did. She’s kind._

_Not just to you, pup._

_We need a lot more wood._

_When it gets lighter. Gonna be hard to see, so I wanna wait until we have as much light as possible._

Eric nodded. _Don’t wait too long. We have to keep her warm._

I rubbed Eric’s head reassuringly, and inside grinned. Rachel’s knack with the strays of the world had worked its magic again. Me, Rogue, Satch, probably a lot more I didn’t know. Now the wolf boy. It wasn’t as if she were a damsel in distress who needed a champion to do anything for her. She was the most competent woman I knew. But I cherished her, and she’d clearly put Eric under her spell.

In a few minutes, she beckoned us to the fire, and we hunkered down to pull meat off the brazier and sip soup. Eric got up once to bring more snow to melt, but for the most part we were content to bend over the fire and savor the island of warmth. But eventually Eric’s glance at the dwindling woodpile matched my sense of the daylight, and I beckoned to him.

“No need to put it off any longer. Gotta scrounge for wood.”

Rachel pulled out the red fleece pullover she’d given Eric yesterday and held it out to him. Eric put it on without argument. I pulled on all of my shirts and my sweater on top and laced up my boots. Rachel stayed close to the fire, but she turned to Eric.

“Eric, I’m going to use my talents to see what I can sense outside. My eyes are going to get very bright, but it won’t hurt you or Logan. Just try to keep your emotions as even as you can. If you get scared, I’ll feel it and it can hurt.”

Eric squatted on his haunches to sign. _Like if something is too loud, it can hurt your ears?_

Rachel nodded vigorously. “That’s a good analogy. That’s exactly what it’s like.”

_What can you tell?_

“I can see if anything’s stirring out there. I can sense time to some extent, too, and if something is going to happen that you should stay away from.”

“Go ahead, darlin’,” I prompted. “I don’t want to take long at this.”

“Okay.”

Rachel’s eyes lit brightly, drawing a little flinch from Eric, but he was more intrigued than anything else. He watched her closely as she stilled, even her breathing. After a few seconds, the glow in her eyes faded but didn’t die, meaning she was still reading.

“The wind is too strong for any animals or birds to be moving,” she reported. “The wind is quite erratic, so be careful about your footing. I don’t sense anything untoward.”

“Then let’s get on it.” I handed Eric one end of the parachute cord that I’d already tied around my waist.

Eric tied the cord around his waist over the fleece, and followed me wordlessly to the teepee door.

“Be careful,” Rachel murmured.

“Stay warm,” I wished her, and Eric signed the same thing.

We went outside. For a second, the wind was so strong that snow blinded me almost to the point of disorientation. I fixed the teepee location in my head and struggled out with Eric close at my back. The good news was that we didn’t have to go far to find dead branches to haul back. We made several trips in rapid succession. Rachel waited at the teepee door to take the wood from us. I kept one eye on the pup while we worked to make sure he wasn’t getting too cold. Four trips came and went fast, almost in as many minutes. But after we took the easy pickings, we had to venture farther from the teepee. The wind was so temperamental that I had to concentrate to keep my sense of direction focused on the teepee, and even my body was hard pressed to stay warm.

I shoved another armload of wood into the teepee, but Rachel pushed her way past the wood. She had her coat reversed to show the bright ruby red lining, and she had the whistle from her emergency kit around her neck.

“What’re you doin’?” I snapped. “Get back inside!”

“Where’s Eric?” she asked, her eyes glowing painfully.

I twisted around. “Right behind me. Get back inside!”

Rachel pulled on the cord around my waist, and sure enough, it was slack. She plunged past me, faster than I could grab. “Rachel!” I shouted.

She didn’t listen. Instead, she put the whistle to her lips and blew it for all she was worth as she struggled through the snow. She did that over and over, still fighting through the snow. It was all I could do to keep her red coat in sight.

“Eric!” Rachel howled as I barreled into her. She grabbed my sweater and dragged me to a stop. “Eric! Run!”

A good thirty meters from the teepee a horrific gust of wind was seconded by a deafening snap of lumber, and a tree crashed down right in front of us. Before it had stopped trembling, Rachel loosed her grip on me and struggled forward again, still shouting and blowing that whistle.

I yanked her to a stop. “Let me listen!” I snapped.

She fell silent, and I strained to hear anything other than the wind. After long seconds, I did hear something stirring on the other side of the fallen tree.

“Stay right here,” I ordered Rachel, then fought my way around the tangled branches until I stumbled over something that turned out to be Eric. Maybe Rachel’s yells had kept him from ending up under the trunk, but the whipping branches had stunned him. His gangly body was all limp arms and legs, and I struggled to haul him over my shoulders. I had to tuck Rachel under my arm, too, before I could fight my way back towards the teepee. In a few seconds, Eric roused. He thumped me on the back, so I let him slide off. He struggled to the other side of Rachel and together we got her back to the teepee. The wind was terrific, enraged that we’d gotten away from it. The teepee finally materialized out of the snow, and I pulled Rachel and Eric in after me.

“Put more wood on the fire,” I told Eric, and he stumbled to do as I asked. “Rachel, you crazy woman, talk to me!”

“What do you want me to say?” she mumbled, trying to make a joke out of it.

“How about, ‘That was stupid and I’m sorry,’ for starters,” I growled, brushing the snow off her with exasperated swipes of my hand. “You shot away from me like a bat outa hell, and I damn’ near missed followin’ you in the snow.”

“I’m s-s-sorry.” Her teeth chattered almost to the point that she couldn’t talk. “I saw the tree, but there were too many other lines going by for me to know what else to do. I saw Eric under the tree, I saw you under the tree, I saw nobody under the tree but lost in the snow. It was too confusing to explain. Brrrr! How can it be this cold and not be the Ice Age?”

Eric had the fire stoked, so I got Rachel near the warmth. By then, I felt the ice in my bones, too, and shivered only a bit less than she did. I shook the snow out of my hair, brushed off my pants and boots, then hunkered by the fire.

“Eric, you okay?” I asked gruffly. “You got whacked pretty hard.”

He looked groggy. Rachel forced her trembling fingers to push back the hood from his ears. Sure enough, he’d gotten a good-sized knot on his head, but I didn’t smell any blood.

“I bet you have a headache,” Rachel said.

Eric shrugged and tried to smile as he brought his hands up to sign. _The tree didn’t hit as hard as Logan does._

I snorted. “You’re a piss-poor couple of clowns, both of you. Gonna get us killed.”

“I didn’t push that tree over,” Rachel protested as Eric signed the same thing.

“Yeah, yeah,” I growled. “Rachel, stop fussin’ with your damn’ pack and get close to the fire. Eric, pile in with her.”

“I want to get him some aspirin.” Rachel finally got her fingers moving enough to find the small tin in her pack. “Got it. Here, Eric.”

“Okay, you found the aspirin. Get back in the nest.”

“Gladly, even if you are growling.” Rachel huddled beside me. “Come on, Eric. You, too.”

The pup hastened to swallow his pills, washing them down with a few laps of water from his bowl. It was nearly empty. I’ll give him this – he was hurting, but he filled the water melting pan and the soup pot before he brushed himself free of snow and piled in beside Rachel.

We wrapped everything we had around us. In a few minutes I stopped shaking. It took a while longer before Eric did, but Rachel never did. I didn’t say it, but Eric and I hadn’t gotten nearly enough wood, and Rachel’s constant shivering worried me. The wind was no less daunting now than it had been last night. We needed it to break soon.

For the next three hours, we stayed in a knot of bodies to keep Rachel as warm as possible. I kept Eric awake in case he had a concussion and kept miserly watch on the wood down to the last twig. I’d have to have to make another foray soon. Just when there was no more avoiding it, I realized that both Eric and Rachel were asleep, and I wasn’t far from it. As I roused, the silence crashed in.

“Hey, you two,” I nudged Rachel against my chest and Eric next to her. “Wind’s died.”

Eric raised his head. He sniffed, tucked his nose back under his arm, and made a noise deep in his throat that meant relief.

Rachel didn’t move, but she was awake. The fur on the back of Eric’s neck shone as her eyes lit.

“A break in the storm?” she wondered sleepily.

“Gonna get while the gettin’s good,” I said. “We need more wood. You two keep each other warm. Storm may be over, but the Ice Age ain’t.”

I slid out, and Eric curled around Rachel as I wrapped the kimonos and other bits and bobs around them. I pulled on my boots – no easy job, because they were frozen even sitting close to the fire – and ducked outside.

The world looked shocked into stillness. The pines that’d been our windbreak were clotted with white, and drifts piled high around trunks and brush. The snow was loose and powdery, and I floundered in it as I searched for wood. The temperature was still dangerously cold, but with the wind gone, I wouldn’t freeze before I collected enough fuel for the next twenty-four hours.

Before long, I had an impressive pile of branches piled by the teepee, as well as the inside stocked. It smelled like the storm had blown itself out, but I wasn’t taking chances. I wanted to be generous with how much we burned, just to get Rachel warm enough to stop shivering.

When I stamped my way inside the teepee, trying to leave as much of the powder outside, I found Eric had already stacked most of what I’d dragged inside, and refilled our water reserves. Rachel had stoked the fire, and held her hands out to warm them. Meat sizzled on the brazier and the soup pot was heating. I encouraged both her and Eric to eat up. It took a lot of calories to stay warm, and that was Mission Prime.

Two more days passed before the dangerous cold passed. We didn’t do much except shiver and huddle, but we had plenty of wood and meat. Funny – we were in what most people would call a life of death situation, but the it didn’t seem like it. Rachel was the most vulnerable, but she was happy, at peace, the heart of our wolf pack. She helped us pass the time by telling stories, which Eric loved. I finally got how badly the pup had suffered from his brother’s death. Their companionship had been all he’d had to stay human for the past year, and when it had gone, so had his humanity. With her stories, her regard, and her hand on his fur, Rachel gave him his clan, his identity as a human. I didn’t say so, but I forgave him for striking out… as long as I didn’t think too much about how he’d chosen to strike out.

What mitigated the last of my grudge was how much Eric hung on Rachel’s words and tried to make her laugh. His scent told me that he had no interest in challenging my place in her affections because she was his pack mother. His emotions surely told Rachel a lot more than that.

Me? I liked having a clan as much as Eric did. I liked being Rachel’s samurai, Eric’s mentor, the alpha in our pack. I liked taking care of them, basking in their regard. I liked it so much that it wouldn’t last. The snow wouldn’t hold us much longer.

Finally, the temperature crept up to a few degrees below freezing, and we were able to move again. It was slow going through the fresh powder, but in another couple of days, we were within sight of a town. That evening over dinner, I called a powwow.

“Looks like we’ll reach town tomorrow,” I began. Eric didn’t suppress a whimper, but Rachel hugged him close. “We gotta figure out how to get Rachel through the media mess and us close enough to rejoin forces when the time is right.”

“I’ve been thinking,” Rachel said thoughtfully. “I need a new phone. So maybe I should just walk into the phone store first, because I can truthfully say that I want to call my grandmother and tell her I’m all right. If I can get the clerk to hold off until I get the phone, then I can head to the police station right after, but I’ll have a secure phone to call my grandmother, then Daniel to get him started on locating Eric’s mother. Or maybe I should give you the phone somehow, so you can call.”

I grinned. “I’ve got my own ways to scrounge up a temporary replacement when the time comes. You keep an eye on the press, and when they get bored, we’ll spirit you out of there and on to wherever geek boy sends us.”

“But how –”

“Better you don’t know, darlin’,” I cut her off. “Eric and I’ll take care of it. You ain’t above a little larceny, are ya, Eric?”

Eric’s expression was worried. _That’s theft, right?_ he signed slowly.

Rachel giggled. “Logan’s very talented that way when he needs to be. All that special ops training he can’t tell us about.”

“Your tax dollars at work,” I quipped. “Never know when bein’ behind enemy lines means you have to hot wire anything with wheels.”

We talked a while longer, trying out various contingencies, until we were ready to sleep. Eric bedded down in the nest fast enough. Rachel lay sandwiched between Eric and me, finally warm enough not to shiver.

“Rachel,” I murmured.

“Hmmmm?”

“Did you think about not goin’ back?” I whispered in Japanese. “Weapon X would think you’re dead.”

A long silence. “I did.”

I waited her out.

“They’d find me sooner or later,” she whispered painfully. “And making my grandmother suffer, thinking I was dead… I don’t want to do that, Logan.”

“Figured. Just wanted to cover all the angles.”

“And there’s Eric. I promised to look for his mother. I can’t do that without going back.”

“It’s not as cold where my place is, but just as remote. Could take the pup with us. We’d figure how to call Daniel.”

“Were… you thinking that you could disappear, too?”

I’d thought about more than that. But would one of the world’s richest women be happy living like a peasant in the middle of frozen nowhere with no indoor plumbing or heat?

What if it lasted a while? Wasn’t something better than nothing?

When Weapon X found out, she’d be alone, unaware, nothing but bait, just like Fox…

“Guess they’d find me, too,” I whispered.

Rachel wrapped her arms around me tightly and didn’t say anything else.


	13. Chapter 13

The next morning, we left the teepee and most of the baggage to hike down the mountain. All we took with us was what people would reasonably believe Rachel could’ve carried by herself – one pack worth of clothes, her bag of emergency gear, and my katana and wakizashi. By noon, we were less than a kilometer from whatever town we’d come across. I ran recon to confirm that there was a cell phone store in town, and that it was three blocks from the local police station. We shared a meal of frozen deer jerky, then it was time to get Rachel back to civilization. Wasn’t easy. Rachel cried and Eric whimpered, and I was beginning to think that I’d have to be a rat and break things up. Finally, Rachel let Eric go and wrapped her arms around me.

 _Take your sweater_ , Eric signed, pointing to the red fleece he still wore.

“You keep it until we get someplace warmer. And you two take good care of each other. I hope we’ll see each other in two days. Call me tomorrow if you can and we’ll sort the next pieces out.”

“Will do, darlin’. Now git before it gets too late and the cell phone store closes. It’s Tuesday, so it should be open long enough for you to hike in.”

I kissed her like she deserved to be kissed, which she returned with more sorrow than passion. She hugged me again, and Eric once more for good measure. Then she turned and hurried out of sight.

Eric whimpered. I didn’t feel any better about it. I rubbed his shoulder in commiseration.

“We’ll see her again soon, Eric,” I said softly. “But right now, we gotta let her go. Can’t find your mom without her goin’ down the mountain.”

 _If my mom is anywhere to be found,_ he signed despondently.

“If she’s there, Rachel and our friend Daniel will find her. After that, we’ll figure out somethin.’ But in the mean time, you an’ I got stuff to do.”

Eric’s ears pricked up in curiosity as his wolf’s head swiveled towards me. _What?_

“We’ll be okay in the teepee tonight, but after that, we’ll have lie low. You know she marked the GPS location of the teepee to tell the police, and we don’t wanna be anywhere near when they come check it out. And we have to steal a cell phone and at least one car.”

Eric looked at me with trepidation. I grinned. “Don’t tell Rachel I told ya this, pup. But it’s gonna be fun. Trust me.”

He didn’t believe me, but he wanted to. And that was all I’d need to get him through this.


	14. Chapter 14

After I was out of sight of Logan and Eric, I had a good long cry. I kept moving, blotting my tears as they fell so they didn’t freeze on my cheeks, and I was careful not to lose my footing. I was leaving my lover behind, as well as a boy whom I’d grown very fond of, and I didn’t like it. Twice, I thought about going back to them – surely we could find some way to get word to my grandmother and Daniel without making a public announcement of things. But I didn’t. I’m not sure why.

I ventured into town. I’d been careful this morning to scrub the smelliest parts of me with snow, and put on the cleanest clothes I had, and I had my fur hat on to cover my greasy hair. Logan’s wakizashi was in my pack and his katana was inside my coat. But there was no disguising the hilt that stuck up over my shoulder, my general dishevelment, my smell, or the stains on my coat, even though I wore the cleaner red side out. It seemed weird, being among buildings and cars and people again. I understood Logan’s discomfort around people, because I felt it now.

I tried to walk normally down the three blocks to the cell phone store. No one looked at me much because I was projecting subliminal inattention to myself for all I was worth. I made it into the cell phone store without any undue notice.

I almost gave myself away when the heat inside the store hit me. It was a seduction that nearly had me moaning in shock. I’d forgotten how cold I’d been for days. The dryness of the mechanically heated air, the sound of the noisy store – I almost dropped to my knees to press my numb hands to the heated floor. But at the last moment, I shored myself up and walked casually to the next available clerk.

“My cell phone is broken and I need a replacement,” I said when the man looked up. His nametag said he was Jacob. I had my broken phone in my hand to keep the clerk focused on it instead of me. “Do you have this model in stock?”

“Yes, ma’am, we do. Whoa – what happened to your phone…”

He looked from the shattered phone to my face, and while it wasn’t quite recognition, there was clear understanding that lots of things weren’t right about my appearance.

“It’s a long story, and I’ll tell you if you can replace this in the next five minutes,” I smiled conspiratorially. “You’ll have quite a story to tell your friends.”

I projected ease, calm, everything’s okay, and he smiled to match my expression. “No prob,” he nodded, and took my phone. Let me get one out of stock, and I’ll be right back.”

“That’d be great,” I smiled gratefully, and he hastened away. True to his word, he was back in a couple of minutes with a close match to my phone.

“It isn’t exactly the same model, but a newer one, if that’s okay.”

“Perfect. I was due for an upgrade anyway.”

“I just need your name and phone number.”

I leaned closer, drawing him in. When I held up my driver’s license, his eyes got big.

“You’re Rach –”

“Shh,” I urged. “Yes, I’m Rachel Osaka, and you can tell anybody you like in ten minutes. That’ll give me time to get to the police station to tell them that I’m all right without making a scene. I just – it’s been a long trek down here, and I desperately want to tell my grandmother that I’m alive, and I don’t want to be mobbed. Please.”

“Yes, ma’am,” the clerk gulped, his fingers flying over his keyboard. “Just give me your number so I can set up your phone –”

I did so. “There are special security features on my phone, so please make sure they’re all in place.”

“I see ‘em.” He eyed me again. “I’ve never seen some of these before. Wow.”

I nodded. “The good news is that when I call my grandmother, I won’t worry about eavesdroppers.”

“No, ma’am; you won’t. It’ll just take me a minute more. Geez, the papers said your plane went down almost two weeks ago.”

“Did they? The weather’s been so bad, I’ve lost track of the days.”

“So bad that they couldn’t send anyone to search for your plane. Worst storm we’ve had around here in a decade. Everyone figured you were dead. Are you all right? Were you up there alone?”

“I’m fine. Really.” But I shut my eyes when I thought about the rigors of the past two weeks and didn’t say anything more. I didn’t have to. Jacob made the inferences he wanted to, and he swallowed hard.

“How’d you survive?”

“I’m very, very glad that my Girl Scout troop liked winter camping.”

“What’d you find to eat?” he whispered, incredulous.

“Rabbits are easy to catch with a snare. Inner tree bark and spruce needles are easy to find, too. And I found a dead deer before the wolves got to it.”

“Jeez, that’s amaz –” The computer console between us beeped. “Okay. There. You’re set. Is billing your account okay, Miss Osaka?”

“That would be great. Thank you so much. And I appreciate you keeping this down. How far is it to the police station?”

“Just three blocks. Across the street. Can I take you? Do you want me to call them?”

“I’m fine, Jacob. And thank you again. You’re a life saver.”

I took the precious cell phone, put it in my coat pocket, and forced myself back out into the cold. It hit me like a brick, but I moved as quickly as I could towards the police station. Jacob was surely blabbing about his latest customer even as I had the thought, but that was okay. He’d helped me, and if he wanted to talk, it did me no harm. I hastened to the police station, and sure enough, the duty officer was just hanging up the phone as I came through the door. He met my eyes, then looked me up and down.

I smiled. “I see Jacob at the cell phone store didn’t waste any time.”

“No ma’am, he didn’t. Miss Osaka?”

I nodded, and took a deep breath. “Before we get started, do you have any coffee? It’s been a cold couple of weeks.”

He shook his head at my understatement, cracked a reluctant smile. “You want cream and sugar?”


	15. Chapter 15

That evening, I checked into the most upscale hotel to be found. No, it didn’t have a fancy suite, a Jacuzzi, or a masseuse, but it had an understanding and competent concierge who smoothly handled the trail of gawkers who came into the lobby with me, even as he ordered staff to take care of my registration. In mere moments, I was shown upstairs to a quiet room with a bed full of pillows and blankets and a shower that I could have worshipped. I paid the bellboy enough that he wouldn’t tell the gawkers what room I was in, gave him my room service order, then locked the door and let down.

I wasted no time stripping off my clothes and ensconcing myself in the shower. God, to savor hot water and lots and lots of soap… almost orgasmic. Once the grime was gone, I scrubbed everything except my boots and my coat. It was almost sinful to wrap the hotel terry robe around me and dry my hair and my clothes. I’d nearly forgotten what warmth was.

Room service came with the biggest salad they had. I’d eaten enough meat over the past two weeks to drive my digestion crazy, so veggies had never tasted so good. And to have tea again… When I was full, I piled into the huge bed with a groan.

I missed having Logan and Eric so close.

Years ago, when my talents had manifested as a fourteen year-old, I’d isolated myself from touching others because the sensations had been so overwhelming. Logan had been the first to help me accept them, accommodate them, and even as my talents had exploded past all comprehension, I’d come to savor the sensations they brought me. I missed Logan’s rough tumble of emotions, his hidden tenderness, his fierce protectiveness, his strength. Too, I missed Eric’s grief and tentativeness that had morphed into curiosity and the quiet passions of the bookish, reflective boy he still was. I missed the smell of his fur, how it tickled my neck. I missed the outdoors smell of Logan’s skin, the caress of his arm around my ribs.

I was glad that neither of them saw me cry for missing them.

More than homesickness for our small wolf pack caused my tears. The police had granted me a few minutes to call my grandmother, a hard conversation because I had to explain the pilot’s death and ask her to contact my parents’ company so they could alert the pilot’s family. Then the police had begun their barrage. They’d been considerate, but it had still been a hard couple of hours. I’d had to relive the death of the pilot, my heart-stopping parachute jump, and setting up the camp. I’d given them the GPS location of the wreck without trepidation. With any luck, the storm had dumped so much snow on the wreck that it’d be impossible to make out how many people had walked away from it. I’d told them the rest of the story leaving Logan and Eric out, substituting a lucky tree fall to explain the deer meat. I’d even given them the GPS location of our last camp, trusting that no one would head for it until tomorrow, and by then Logan and Eric would be well away with Logan’s gear. I’d stuck to as much of the real story as possible so that I wouldn’t trip myself up. The storm had given me a great alibi, because I could say that I’d spent most of the past two weeks hunkered down. With any luck, what they’d find at the wreck and our last campsite would sell the tale for me without more explanation.

They’d wanted to take me to hospital for evaluation, but I’d demurred. I’d still had blood in my hair from my parachute landing, enough that my survival and lack of a concussion would have raised eyebrows. I hadn’t needed anyone to wonder, or for word to get around to the people who might’ve engineered this new ability in me.

Of course, the local media had been waiting with cameras when I was escorted out of the police station, all of them clamoring for a press conference, an exclusive, a photo op. More had arrived with every second that passed. I’d been polite, but I had a long history of ducking the press on my own account, to say nothing of protecting Logan and Eric. When I’d been a child, one of my mother’s favorite sayings had been that it was better say nothing and be thought a fool than to open one's mouth and remove all doubt. So I had put her inscrutable smile on my face and had said only that I was very tired and I hoped that people would respect my privacy while I recovered.

Logan had no idea how what a pain it was having enough money to draw vultures. For that was the only reason the press cared to follow my doings. It was no different than the fascination with a lyger. I sympathized with the poor creatures that were stared at with no less insistence than I was. I needed a police escort just to get to the hotel.

Once I had a hotel door to lock behind me, I called my grandmother back. Of course, she had her own barrage of questions. Because the line was secure, I was more forthcoming that Logan had been with me, but I held silence about Eric. I didn’t speak about him until I called Daniel.

“Rachel, you’re alive! However how? Was your dark laddie with you? Are you all right? What happened? Why won’t you say anything?!”

I laughed at how Daniel’s questions tripped over themselves. “I’m fine, Daniel. Really.” Then I told him the real story.

“What’d you say his mother’s name is?” Daniel said. I heard him typing in a blur as I give him the name.

“Eric said the town name was Bledsoe in British Columbia. He had a brother, Robbie. If you can find any trace of her –”

“Because you want tae save this piece of the world, nae doubt,” Daniel’s smile came through the phone as clearly as if I saw it. “I’ll send out the wee beasties, sma sister. I am so glad you made it.”

“So am I. Let me know what you find, all right?”

“As soon as I find it.”

“Thank you so much, Daniel. And one more thing…”

“Yes?” Daniel’s brogue was particularly thick, so I expected that he was laughing.

“If you happen to run across news of any other mutants like Eric, I’d like to know.”

“You are so predictable, my lass. Consider it done.”

“Thank you again. Take care, pale brother.”

“Stay warm, sma sister.”


	16. Chapter 16

Sleeping alone and inside was harder than I expected. The room was too hot, the artificial building noise was too intrusive, and the antiseptic smell of the sheets was too odd. Consequently, once I got to sleep, I stayed that way until late. One pleasant aspect of civilization was room service with breakfast. Fruit, oatmeal, and tea were a welcome change from snowmelt and deer soup, or even the crisp ptarmigans that Eric liked so much. It was a real pleasure to brush my teeth again, too. Thusly fortified, I called the concierge to ask where I could buy some clothes. What I had on might be clean, but they showed the wear they’d been subject to during the past two weeks. The concierge would have a list for me when I came down, and a cab as well. I waited until he called to tell me all was ready before I ventured out. Of course, the expected crowd of reporters was waiting, but the concierge slipped me his list and escorted me to the cab quickly, expertly fending off the reporters. I only smiled before ducking into the cab. Several scrambled for their own cars as I drove away.

Thus began a tedious day. It seemed that everyone had heard about my amazing reappearance and wanted to talk to me. Once I replaced my battered clothing with the usual plain black that I typically wore, I signed a lot of autographs – what a strange experience that was. Most people were kind and didn’t intrude past a point. Some even rode herd on the reporters who trailed me like the vultures I’d named them. I was unfailingly polite, and liberal with my appreciation for all the help and consideration I was given. At the local Japanese bistro, the chef offered to make me anything I wanted for lunch, gratis. Remembering my days with Satch, I agreed only if he let me cook him lunch in return, so the press got pictures of the two of us cooking and speaking Japanese. That was fun.

If that satisfied some of the morbid curiosity about my health, so much the better.

The local Girl Scout troop heard my comment about camping, and they asked me to show them how to set a rabbit snare. That I did gladly. I casually talked to them about how I’d survived, making it seem like no big deal.

That ought to take care of people wondering how I’d done it, too.

By late afternoon, I was glad to return to my hotel. Before I could escape to the elevator, however, the concierge intercepted me.

“You have a pair of visitors, Miss Osaka,” he murmured, nodding towards the seating area. The policeman was the one who’d been the first to greet me yesterday at the station. The second wore the red uniform of a Royal Canadian Mounted Police officer. The former didn’t worry me. The second one… my hackles prickled. I surreptitiously let my talents edge open, not enough to light my eyes.

“Thank you, Mr. Sambien.”

I crossed the lobby to the two men waiting for me.

“Officer Newton, it’s nice to see you again,” I smiled at the local policeman. When I shook his hand, I discovered that he didn’t like the Mountie, either. I held my hand out to the Mountie. “And you are…?”

“Captain Mahoney, ma’am,” the Mountie introduced himself, taking my hand only briefly, but it was long enough that I got an interesting undercurrent of indecision. He wasn’t the Weapon X man I’d expected, but he wasn’t quite buying the amazing reappearance of a reclusive rich woman, either. “I believe Officer Newton arrived first.”

“All right,” I nodded with a smile. “How can I help you, Officer Newton?”

He gestured to a bag by the chair where he’d been seated. “Two officers found your campsite right where you told us it would be, and they were able to retrieve one of the items that you mentioned that you’d like to be returned to you.”

“That’s wonderful. You didn’t have any trouble, then?”

“No, ma’am. But I have some bad news. It looks like animals found your cache of meat and ran through what you left. We didn’t get much. The team brought back the brazier you told us about, but there wasn’t much else to salvage.”

So Logan and Eric had had their joke. I nodded, looking only a little disappointed, and kept my amusement to myself as the officer bent to show me the rim of the brazier in its bag. “You’re very generous to bring back my brazier,” I said sincerely, taking it from the officer. “This has sentimental value, that’s all, and the rest wasn’t important. Please tell your officers how grateful I am to them. And please let me know where I can send a donation to the station. It’s the least I can do in appreciation.”

“Oh, yes, ma’am, the men and women will greatly appreciate that.” He gave me an address, which I duly wrote down. “Thank you, Miss Osaka. You have a good evening.”

“I will. Thank you again.”

As Officer Newton made his retreat, I cast a measuring glance at the Mountie.

“Captain Mahoney, to what do I owe the honor of your visit?”

He reached into the inner breast pocket of his red jacket. That unexpected movement had my talents searching the time lines, wondering if he had a weapon. But all of them showed him bringing out only a small manila folder, so I held still as he opened the folder and took out some photographs to hand me.

They showed Logan and me in the Shin-Chitose Airport in Sapporo, Japan, boarding my parents’ private jet.

Captain Mahoney held up a tape recorder. I heard the garbled transmission of the SOS Logan had broadcast as the jet went down, after he’d thrown me out of the plane, reciting the plane’s location, the collapse of the pilot, the loss of fuel, and that the plane was going down. Even as gruffly dispassionate as Logan’s voice was, even though we’d survived, a lump filled my throat.

I kept very tight control of my vital signs. I thought about the look that had veiled my mother’s face when she’d played poker, and turned that same inscrutable expression on the Mountie. I waited for him to speak. The silence stretched without break.

“Do you have anything to say?” the man asked unnecessarily.

“Such as?” I replied softly.

“Mr. Logan is known to the government, Miss Osaka.”

I acknowledged his information with a nod.

“He is known to have associated with you before.”

I nodded again.

“Such as when your parents were killed.”

I didn’t react to his blunt words, because he surely said them to shake an unguarded comment from me. I decided to lob the ball right back at the man.

“If you have something to say, Captain Mahoney, please say it.”

“Was Mr. Logan on that plane with you?”

“Why do you ask when you think you already know the answer?”

“You didn’t survive that crash on your own, Miss Osaka.”

I chuckled. “Actually, I did. If you watch the local news tonight, you’ll even hear how I did it.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“It’s on record with the local Girl Scout troop, Captain.”

“You gave a masterful performance for the press, Miss Osaka. Quite understated, quite believable. I just don’t buy it, that’s all.”

I shrugged. “Captain Mahoney, my parents acquired their extensive wealth before I was born. My parents were very aware of the danger that posed to them and to me. I’ve been trained all my life to deal with events no less extraordinary than what I’ve undergone in the last two weeks. I daresay that I’ve undergone more extensive survival training than all but the most elite military forces.”

“You can’t argue with these pictures, the recording.”

“I have no intention of doing so.”

“So Mr. Logan was with you.”

I considered. “I’ve found that one of the best protections against the dangers that intrude on my life is to do what my security team tells me. Speaking about that would jeopardize me as well as those who enforce my security.”

“Is Mr. Logan alive?”

I crossed my arms and looked at him skeptically. “Do you know who you’re talking about?”

“Then where is he?”

I shook my head. “I have no idea.”

“I could take legal means to force you to talk.”

“Could you?” I reposted quietly. “If you are truly from the agency you claim to represent, you would be sensitive to the protocols of security measures and those who provide them. If you are not, then I have nothing to say to help you with whatever your motive is. Whatever branch of government you represent, I suggest that you speak to your superiors for enlightenment. They are surely better informed of such things than I am. Now excuse me.”

There wasn’t anything for him to say, especially not with Officer Newton keeping us both under circumspect observation from near the lobby door. I nodded to Officer Newton to thank him for his watchfulness, collected my brazier, and then made my escape. Mahoney didn’t do anything but look annoyed, which told me more about his legitimacy than anything else did.

As soon as my back was turned, I let my talents fire full force. They told me that Mahoney stood in the lobby for a minute while Officer Newton took his leave, then put the photos back in his breast pocket and exited the hotel. I locked myself in my room reasonably assured of being left alone.

I hadn’t been in my room an hour when my cell phone buzzed. It was a text message from Daniel with a cell phone number. Not two minutes after that, I received a call from that same number.

“Hello?”

“Hiya, O,” Logan graveled. “Keep it bland, copy?”

He meant for me to be circumspect in case the line was tapped, despite all the security precautions on my phone. “Copy.”

“How’s it bein’ rich and famous?”

“Like being an animal in a zoo. I had a visit from someone claiming to be a Mountie. He’s got photos and asking questions about who was on the plane. Keep your eyes open.”

“Nothin’ new, kid. Warm enough?”

“I miss my wolf pack. Is it okay?”

“It’s listenin’ in. Shapin’ up to be a top notch booster.”

“W…”

“Relax. Just a joyride.”

“You’ll give the phone back, right?”

“Sure. The SUV, too.”

I heard sounds like Eric was laughing. “SUV?”

“Big red one. Pimped out with the works.”

“You did not!”

“You’re right, we didn’t.”

I shut my eyes. “You’re not going anywhere near anything that conspicuous.”

“True.”

“Whatever it is, you’re going to give it back as soon as possible.”

“That’s the plan. Geek boy’s keepin’ us off the cell net, so the owner’s gonna find what he thinks he misplaced. No prob.”

“Okay,” I conceded, mollified.

“Geek boy got any news?”

“Not yet. I hope soon.”

“Okay. You hear from geek boy, call.”

“Will do. Stay warm and safe.”

“See ya, O.”

“Soon, I hope.”

The line went dead.

In the artificial not-silence of my room, I really missed the rest of my wolf pack.

I showered and crawled into bed. Not long after, the phone rang again. This time, it was Daniel.

“Any news, pale brother?”

“I’m nae calling tae tell you nothing,” he said, laughing. “It wasnae easy, but my beasties are persistent fellows. And they sang me an interesting song. I found your bairn’s mother.”

“You did? Tell me. No, wait. Better be careful about ears.”

“No worries, lass. We’re secure. Now, I hae the whole tale. Eric Delacroix and his brother Robbie lived in Bledsoe with their mother, Ellen Yellowknife Delacroix. Their father died before Robbie was born in an oilfield accident. Ellen was a math teacher and a school bus driver. Things were fine until Eric’s talents came on. The town had a history of unease between the local native tribes and the whites who’d moved in during the oil boom. Lucky for him, the tribe’s totem was the wolf, and the elders took him as a sign of good fortune, so they ran interference for him. Things got dicier when his brother manifested the same way two years later, and the local thugs took exception. The boyfriend didn’t like the constant harassment, and apparently exploded one day after his car was vandalized, blaming the brothers for the mess. Things had been bad enough before, but that was the last tick. The two of them took off for the trees. Their mother dumped the boyfriend, but life in Bledsoe had deteriorated so much that she had tae move. By the time she could look for her sons, they were gone past her ken.”

I murmured sympathetically.

“It’s nae all bad,” Daniel continued. “I found out that she’s in Deacon, about 100 miles from where you are. She’s a park ranger. She lives near the national forest up there, so there’s lots of room for Eric. From what I read, I think she’d be most eager tae find her son again, even if it’s only the one.”

“Do you have her address?”

“Already downloaded with directions and coordinates to your phone, lass,” Daniel said promptly. “Just promise me that you’ll tell me how it turns out when you talk tae her. Because I did find one or two people gifted with talents similar tae Eric’s.”

“You are an angel,” I smiled. “Would you rather have sushi or chicken parmesan as a thank you?”

“Both, of course. And a dozen of your cinnamon rolls. And some of those wee pecan tarts.”

“Consider it a promise. I hear you’re running some covert cell phone coverage.”

“What you don’t know, you can’t tell whoever asks, Miss Media Lass. You’re all over the net. You look bonny and braw for someone who’s been dead for ten days.”

I rolled my eyes. “I wish I could make them disappear as easily as you do phone tracers, pale brother. They’re a menace. My cheeks ache from smiling all day. And they’re not the worst of it.” I described the Mountie.

“I suspect he will nae be a problem for long. Your dark laddie’s got plans. ‘Tis a good thing he’s on our side.”

“Yes, it is.”

“So call him. And don’t be surprised at how fast he moves.”

I laughed. “I will. Talk to you soon, pale brother.”

“Enjoy the ride, sma sister. Take care.”

I wasted no time in calling Logan.

“Yeah.”

“Geek boy found the target. He tells me you’ve been busy.”

“Mighta,” Logan drawled, sounding smug.

“I hope so. I want out.”

“South side entrance at 0315. Behind the dumpster.”

“What will I be waiting for?”

“Don’t know yet. But you’ll know it when you see it.”

“Okay. Be careful, please.”

“Don’t I always?”

“No, but I’m going to ask anyway. And watch out for anyone with a red coat and a funny hat.”

He chuckled. “Amateur. See ya, O.”

Only a fool would’ve stayed in bed after such a call. I got up, dried my hair, and stowed everything in my pack, leaving out only what I was going to wear. I set the alarm for three, and settled into bed to wait.


	17. Chapter 17

The alarm woke me like a trumpet reveille. I was out of bed before I was fully awake, so strident was it. I dressed quickly, waited for my cell phone to read 3:10 a.m., then I eased out of the room. I kept to shadows while I let my talents scan for anyone snooping around. The occasional late-arriving guests schlepping home from the town’s nightlife were easy to avoid by lurking around corners or ducking behind vending machines. When the hall was clear, I flitted to the stairway at the south end of the building and paused, scanning above or below me. Nothing yet, but one of the time lines showed me a couple of people approaching the stairwell. I projected a sharp burst of fear, scaring them off. When they turned tail, I sent elation after them to encourage their swift retreat. While the way stayed clear, I hurried down the stairs as fast and quietly as I could. Once downstairs, I flitted to the side entrance as Logan had directed me. I hung inside the door as I scanned, then slipped outside, pulling the door softly behind me. There was the dumpster just as Logan had described. I eased closer –

A drunk was throwing up beside it. He was too busy to see me, but I circled around to the front of the dumpster as silently as I knew how, out of his line of sight. I stilled my breathing, then as the retching stopped, I flicked a thread of fear at him, trying to poke him into moving away. All I got for my trouble was a curse, and a furtive shuffle of feet. I tried again, and at least he moved around the dumpster – only to crawl inside. I didn’t care. I went around the back, away from the door he’d crawled into, and waited.

A stir to the right. Another figure. Oh, bother – it was the Mountie who didn’t think I had the wherewithal to survive on my own.

I circled around to the other side of the dumpster, ducking low in case the drunk found enough courage to stick his head out. As if he heard me thinking, he floundered inside, rustling the foul stuff around him until the stench threatened to choke me. I scanned, saw several lines where the Mountie flitted towards the dumpster, enough that I circled around behind where he was going to be –

A vehicle turned into the far end of the alley. It was a police car. I swallowed a curse. This was turning into a convention –

It was Logan and Eric. Incredibly, Eric was driving, and Logan was about to duck out of the car after me. I flicked hesitation at Logan, telling him to hold off. The car killed its lights and engine and hung back at the alley entrance.

I came up silently behind Captain Mahoney. I kicked his knees out from under him and was on his back before he finished hitting the ground. I twisted his arm behind him so viciously that he couldn’t push me off.

“Good morning, Captain Mahoney,” I whispered close to his ear. “Is not knowing when I’m being followed something else you don’t think I can manage on my own?”

He mouthed something inarticulate, something not very nice. I exerted the right amount of pressure at the right angle, little effort on my part, but more than enough to force a gasp from him.

“I’m sorry I exceeded your expectations,” I snarled. My anger rose, but I kept it leashed. “The mark of the true professional is knowing when you’ve underestimated your target. Now get off my tail, or you will find out what else I know how to do!”

I took his head in both hands and twisted –

But this wasn’t a sim. This was a real person under my hands, albeit one who wasn’t very smart. I loosed my hands, instead pressing on sensitive points only long enough to stun him. Then I flicked a shot of fear at the drunk who was rousing in the dumpster, and a slap of anger at the groggy Mountie. When I flitted around the dumpster for my gear, I found Logan and Eric there, the former with my pack on his back and the latter with the brazier under his arm. Eric looked at me with wide eyes.

“Told ya she could take care of herself, pup,” Logan whuffed to Eric, pulling me toward the police car. “Let’s git!”

I ran after Logan and Eric for the police car. After Eric dumped my brazier in the back seat, Logan shoved me after it, then scrambled into the front passenger seat. Eric hurried to start the car and back it out of the alley. I cast a look through the back window of the car and flicked a tongue of fear at the dumpster.

“What was that for?” Logan murmured.

“Besides the Mountie beside the dumpster, there’s a drunk inside it. I don’t want him sticking his head out right now.”

Logan chuckled. “Good move. Two blocks, then we’re buggin’ out. I’ll get your stuff.”

“You’re driving, Eric?”

He snorted a laugh, clearly savoring the adventure.

“He’s been to drivin’ school,” Logan said as if that were the most obvious thing in the world. A couple of years ago it probably had been. “Thought it was better for me to snatch you, anyway. One more block, Eric.”

To my amazement, Eric drove the police car right down the main drag to the local night scene district, and turned off to a side street to park in an alley.

“Blue Jeep,” Logan said as we all piled out. “You’re ridin’ shotgun, Rachel.”

I ran as directed, piling into the front seat while Eric took the back. Logan threw my gear to Eric and got into the driver’s seat. We pulled away in seconds and were soon heading out of town, blessedly unremarked.

“Did you get rid of the cell phone?” I persisted.

Logan cut me a glance. “You lose yours?”

“No, I didn’t. I just wanted to make sure all the loose ends were tied up.”

“They’re about to be,” Logan assured me, turning down a residential side street. After going a block, he cut the lights to the Jeep and parked on the side. “Thirty seconds.”

He disappeared into the dark. I turned to Eric. “Where’s he going?” I signed.

 _To put the phone back in the back seat of the car we got it from,_ he signed back.

“Loose end tied up,” Logan grunted, piling back into the Jeep. He turned the Jeep around, finally turning on the lights only when he’d retraced our path back towards the main drag.

“Where are we headed?” Logan asked me casually as we turned away from town.

I exhaled, daring to relax as we moved unnoticed away from the town. I leaned back against the seat, took a deep breath –

“A shower,” I murmured, chagrined. I hadn’t noticed before now, but without a crisis to distract me… “Both of you... You can’t appear on Mrs. Delacroix’s doorstep reeking like this.”

“ _You_ reek,” Logan countered, casting a disgusted look back at Eric. From the noise behind me, Eric was laughing himself silly. “Like a damn’ airhead celebutante. We smelled you in the alley. All that Mountie had to do was follow his nose to tail you.”

“It was the only shampoo in the hotel room.”

Logan snorted. “I liked you better filthy rank.”

Eric chuckled in agreement.

“So we’ll find a happy medium,” I conceded. “What’s the deal with this Jeep? Do we have to ditch it somewhere?”

“Nope,” Logan shook his head. “Thanks to Daniel, you rented it legit. He took care of your hotel bill, too, so we’re in the clear. What do you have in mind?”

I rummaged in my bag for my phone. “Daniel said he downloaded directions to your mother’s place, Eric. It’s in Deacon, about 100 miles away. We can find someplace between here and there to clean up and get some sleep before we stop in.”

Eric tapped my shoulder. _Food, too!_ he signed emphatically.

I looked at Logan. “Drive through,” we said simultaneously. I looked back at Eric. “Do you like burgers?”


	18. Chapter 18

By the time I’d divulged everything that Daniel had uncovered, we were fifty miles down the road. We took care of Eric with a gigantic haul of cheeseburgers, fries, and milkshakes. Say what you like about the ubiquity of MacDonald’s, but for three hungry refugees from civilization, it was a lifesaver. Eric engulfed half a dozen massive sandwiches, uncounted fries, and two milkshakes before calling himself satisfied. Logan ate more than that. Me, I was happy with a single sandwich, a couple of fruit cups, and some cocoa. From there, we stopped at a 24-hour drugstore for unscented shampoo and soap. Next, Logan found a modest roadside motel. When he headed to the office with a handful of cash to pay for the room, I turned to Eric.

“We have to be inconspicuous about getting you inside, Eric,” I said. “Would you act like a wolf hound until we get behind the door?”

He nodded.

“Wolf hounds are sight hounds. Greyhounds, Afghans, Irish wolfhounds. Have you seen them? Very noble and elegant. They don’t slobber like a Rottweiler.”

He looked put upon, but he straightened his ears. _I don’t slobber._

“No, you don’t. You are the noblest of nobles. I’ll call you Anubis if we run into anybody.”

_I’m not going to wear a collar and leash._

“Of course not. You’re a very well trained Russian wolfhound. A prince of the show ring.”

_Like you were in Benson. I saw you on TV._

He was right, and I smiled ruefully. “Just like that.”

Logan climbed back into the Jeep with a key in his hand. “We’re around back.”

I explained quickly what Eric and I had planned to get him into the room without suspicion.

“Good plan. There’s our bunk. Seventeen. I’ll sweep the room first. Then once Rachel and I get the gear, Eric, I’ll give you the all clear to head inside.”

Eric and I nodded as Logan parked before our door. Of course, no one was around to see us sweep the room or take in our things. Once we had everything inside, I called to Eric – which is exactly when a battered SUV pulled up three slots up away and a couple of hunters with their dogs got out. Logan shoved me inside the room, but Eric was only halfway out of the back seat when they spotted him. They both looked drunk, but not enough to miss something that big on four feet. Eric froze beside Logan, one arm curled up like a pointer’s front leg.

“Damn,” one of the hunters muttered, nudging his partner. “Look at that thing. What is that thing?”

Logan turned towards the hunter, glowering. Eric stayed on all fours beside him, but his head was up and he did his best to match a noble’s cool demeanor, peering down his long snout with all the disdain of the prince I’d named him.

“Is Borzoi,” Logan growled with a credible Russian accent. “Imperial Russian wolfhound.”

Logan kept moving, and Eric paced right beside him, growling softly under his breath, not threatening, but asserting his royalty for all he was worth. I smothered a smile.

“хороший, Анубис,” Logan murmured. “будьте спокойны.”

Eric trotted into the room beside Logan, leaving the hunters out in the parking lot. When Logan shut the door on them, I laughed softly.

“You did great, Eric, “ I told him. I looked at Logan. “Do you think they’ll tell the manager?”

Logan shook his head. “Place caters to hunters. Animals are the usual.”

“Good. Did they see me?”

“Nope. They’d both had enough beer that they were lucky to spot somethin’ as big as Eric.”

 _Were you speaking Russian?_ Eric signed. _What did you say?_

“Just to stay calm. Don’t figure either of those two knows the lingo, but no sense takin’ chances.”

I exhaled, relieved. “Good. So, who’s first in the shower?”

“Me,” Logan said. “You two keep an ear out.”

I passed him the shampoo and the soap, and he wasted no time ducking into the bathroom. “You’re next, Eric,” I assured him as the shower started. He sighed in anticipation, and curled beside the bed to wait. I nested in the pillows on the bed, and we signed quietly back and forth while Logan shaved and washed. When he came out in a pair of clean jeans, Eric scrambled to his feet.

“Here,” I beckoned to him before he shut the door. “I bought you a toothbrush.”

He took it with a grin of thanks and shut the door. In just a few seconds, the shower started.

“Good,” Logan growled, joining me in bed and enfolding me in his arms. “Now that the pup’s busy, I’m gonna do somethin’ about that celebutante stink of yours.”

By the time the water stopped and the hair dryer quieted, the celebutante stink was well banished. Eric ventured out with enough caution that Logan must’ve warned him of his intentions. No one spoke about it, and I think Eric expected to curl on the floor, but I beckoned to him to take his place on the other side of the bed. This was the last night our wolf pack would be together, and Logan didn’t protest.

I curled between Eric and Logan with a sigh, and fell asleep warm, full, content.


	19. Chapter 19

When Rachel invited Eric into bed with us, I let it go. I’d long since figured out that Rachel slept better when she was well swaddled, whether with pillows and blankets or me and the pup. The bed was big enough to accommodate Eric’s lanky frame, he’d help to keep Rachel warm, and this was the last night the three of us would be together. So I gave Rachel her wolf pack for one more night.

The next morning, Rachel took her turn in the shower, banishing the last cloying stink of her hotel’s idea of luxurious bathing products. She smelled like her usual self again when she came out of the bathroom dressed and ready to go. Even Eric noticed the improvement and dared to tease her about it.

I’d see about adding my scent to hers again soon enough, but anticipating that would give me something to savor during the long drive. We got breakfast at the next drive-through window down the road, and settled into the drive as we ate.

Eric was quiet as the miles added up, trusting to the tinted windows to keep him unseen in the back seat, but his heart rate started to rise as we came closer to Deacon. Rachel must’ve picked up his emotions, because she turned around to talk to him, asking him about his mother.

 _What if she doesn’t want me back?_ Eric signed when he screwed up his courage to ask what was behind his nerves.

Rachel sighed and shrugged, admitting that that was possible. “She might say that, Eric, but I don’t expect that she will. Daniel’s take was that she really missed you and Robbie. I know we can’t replace Robbie, but she’ll have you, and that’s better than neither of you.”

 _But what if she doesn’t?_ Eric persisted.

Rachel sighed again. The pup was so desperate for something concrete that he all but willed Rachel to say she’d look out for him. From her scent, Rachel wanted to. But she looked him in the eye.

“We’ll figure out something, Eric. But let’s let your mother speak first.”

He dropped his hands in his lap, but he nodded before he went back to staring out the window.

After a while, we came to the turnoff for the state park where Mrs. Delacroix was a ranger. I followed Rachel’s directions up and around a winding road. Finally, she put a hand on my knee.

“Stop here.”

I cut the engine.

Rachel looked back at Eric. “I want to make sure we’re in the clear before we go the rest of the way, Eric. Just to make sure we haven’t been followed. Wolverine?”

“Standard recon, O. Me in the field, you do the close in. Don’t get out ‘til I tell you.”

“Copy,” she said softly, telling me without alarming Eric that she agreed with my seriousness. I eased out of the Jeep, catching the wind, testing the air, letting everything around me tell me what it could. I got immediately that we were well and truly alone, and that we’d done a good job of evading whoever might be interested in tracking Rachel. I looked back at the Jeep and nodded, then turned back to scanning when she got out. My senses told me where Rachel was without my eyes having to confirm it. She paused a few seconds by the Jeep before moving slowly up the road.

“I’ll head up to the house,” she murmured as she passed me. “If I find Mrs. Delacroix, I’ll project yea or nay. You’ll know which is which.”

I let her get a hundred meters ahead of me, following her at that distance until I spotted the lone house halfway up the ridge. At that point, I veered off at a trot to make sure no one was lurking. All I found was a single life sense inside the house – I hoped Eric’s mother. Rachel was tracking up the road without any attempt at concealment, so I signaled all clear to her from the underbrush, and that someone was inside. As she walked up to the house, I eased onto the wide porch around the corner from the front door.

The world reduced to sounds as Rachel’s footsteps paced up the wooden steps. She knocked on the door. From inside came the slight sounds of someone coming to the door. The door opened with a creak.

“Mrs. Delacroix? Ellen Yellowknife Delacroix?” Rachel asked softly.

“Yes, I’m Ellen Delacroix. Can I help you?”

“My name is Rachel Osaka, Mrs. Delacroix.”

I heard a slight intake of breath. “I saw you on the news. You’re the woman in the plane crash who everybody thought was dead until you walked down the mountain two days ago.”

“Yes, ma’am, I am. I’d like to tell you why I was able to walk down that mountain alive.”

There was a silence, a long silence. I smelled confusion, suspicion, a sudden intake of fear. Then I felt Rachel subtly projecting calm, serenity.

“I had help, Mrs. Delacroix. Help I didn’t want to tell the media about. Someone who helped me when I was on the mountain.”

“Who was it?” she said harshly.

“It was your son, Eric.”

She gasped.

“Logan!” Rachel called sharply. “Help me!”

I rushed around the corner to find Rachel struggling to keep Mrs. Delacroix from falling. She was a short, stocky woman with clear Native American features and grey-streaked black hair, reminding me faintly of Silver Fox. I buried my ache in the moment, took the woman in my arms, and carried her into the small living room behind the front door. I got her on the sofa while Rachel ran into the kitchen for a glass of water. She hurried back to hold the glass to Mrs. Delacroix’s lips. After a sip or two, the woman rallied enough to meet Rachel’s eyes.

“Don’t be afraid,” Rachel murmured, projecting calm for all she was worth. “I’m sorry to have frightened you so. Can I get you more water?”

“I want to know about Eric,” she said huskily, pushing herself upright on the sofa. “Is he all right? Was Robbie with him? Where is he now?”

Rachel touched Ellen Delacroix’s hand gently, both in comfort and to intensify the sensations she picked up with her talents.

“Part of this will be very hard,” Rachel said softly. “When the plane crashed, Robbie was in the path of the wreckage. He didn’t survive. I am terribly, terribly sorry.”

The woman’s eyes filled, but she was strong enough to keep her regard on Rachel. “But Eric?”

“Eric was not near the crash site. I met him later. He wasn’t hurt. He is safe.”

“Did you leave him on the mountain? Where is he? I want to see him.”

Rachel smiled. “We brought Eric with us, Mrs. Delacroix. You see, he misses Robbie so much, but we didn’t know whether he’d be welcome here, so I asked him to wait up the road until I knew. In case…”

“I understand,” Ellen gulped. “And yes, I want to see my son. You don’t know how I’ve worried about him. ”

When Rachel looked at me, I eased towards the door.

“This is my friend, Logan, Mrs. Delacroix.”

I nodded a brief welcome, and she nodded back.

“I’ll bring Eric,” I said.

Ellen got up immediately. “I’ll come with you.”

She followed me out the door without even pausing for her coat, and Rachel followed closely behind. When we got within sight of the Jeep, Ellen ran forward as fast as the snow let her. Eric piled out of the Jeep and flung himself forward on all fours, racing towards us, leaping upright only at the last second to crash into his mother’s arms. She wrapped arms around him like she’d never thought to hold him again, and wasn’t about to let go anytime soon.

Rachel came beside me to watch the reunion. She smiled and tried not to cry, and I didn’t tease her about being a softie. I folded my arms over my chest and nudged her shoulder with mine.

“Did your good deed for the day, darlin’,” I murmured in Japanese.

That sent Rachel over the edge. I smelled her tears as she walked away to compose herself. She smelled happy, relieved… and sad. She was letting Eric go, but she mourned at the same time she rejoiced.

Loss was something we both knew. Even happy loss was rough when you’d been down our road.

After the initial surge of emotion, I drove us back to the house where Ellen and put on strong coffee to accompany the tale of the past two weeks. I stayed out of it, but Rachel, Eric, and his mother talked and signed back and forth until most of the details were out. Rachel offered to make dinner, and I ducked out to look at the stars for a while. Rachel did her usual magic in the kitchen to make soup, venison chops, and a big salad while Eric and his mother got reacquainted.

That night, Rachel and I got reacquainted in our own way. Quietly, but thoroughly.

The next morning, Eric and I headed out to hunt, bringing home a good-sized deer to make up for what we’d eaten last night. He and I made a good team, and he was learning fast how to hunt like the wolf he resembled. I’d miss the chase with him. When we came back the victorious hunters, Ellen and Rachel welcomed us with biscuits, mashed potatoes, and a mountain of salad to go with the choice bits.

Rachel and I took our leave after lunch. It wasn’t easy for Rachel or Eric, but she’d done what she’d set out to do – actually, she’d done more. Daniel had found others with the same kinds of mutations as Eric had, and he’d set up a place out on the ‘net for them to talk. As remote as Ellen’s place was, it had a computer, and before we left Rachel made sure that Eric knew how to find his way to Daniel’s site.

As for Ellen, there weren’t words for the gift Rachel had given her. One son was gone, but the other was with her, and for that she would have given Rachel anything she’d asked for.

“Make sure he eats his vegetables,” Rachel quipped, more to keep herself from crying than anything else. But Ellen laughed, Eric looked put upon like any teenager, and Rachel smiled at them both. She and Eric hugged each other hard, bringing Rachel’s tears again, and she got into the Jeep in a rush.

I hate good-byes. Always have. I hated smelling Rachel’s tears, too. I headed for the driver’s seat with a brusque nod and left it at that. When Eric plucked at my sleeve at the last minute, I met his eyes without much warmth. But the pup had figured me out, and he didn’t blanch at my expression.

 _Keep Rachel warm, Logan,_ he signed diffidently.

I nodded.

_And thanks for all the pointers about hunting._

_You’re gettin’ good, Eric. Remember to be patient._

_I will. And…_

He glanced surreptitiously at his mom, and made sure his body was between her and his hands.

_Thanks for not telling my mom that I dragged Rachel out into the snow._

I cracked a smile. _Don’t give me a reason to come back and tell her, got it?_

He nodded sheepishly, and tentatively held out his hand to me.

I clasped it without hesitation. _Look after yourself, pup. Take care of your mom._

He nodded again. Then he backed away.

Eric and his mother stood waving after us until we were out of sight. It took Rachel a lot longer to stop her tears, quiet though they were. I let her mourn in peace.

About fifty miles down the road, Rachel’s scent was calm and she regarded the scenery with some amount of peace. I glanced at her.

“Where to now, darlin’?”

She turned thoughtful eyes on me. “I thought we were going to your place.”

“Offer’s still there. Just givin’ you the chance to take a break before we head back into the Arctic.”

Her smile widened gratefully. “Would you mind if we went somewhere warm, with a beach?”

I grinned. “Got someplace special in mind?”

Twenty-four hours later, we were on the Brazilian Coral Coast, in a villa on the Porto de Pedras.

 

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End file.
